


Tuesday Plays the Piper

by Sperare



Category: X-Men - All Media Types, X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dystopia, Blindfolds, Discrimination, Dubious Consent, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Erik Logic Is The Best Logic, Erik is not a Happy Bunny, Fictional Religion & Theology, Forced Bonding, Forced Marriage, M/M, Mpreg, Physical Abuse, Tattoos, Telepathic Bond, War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-26
Updated: 2014-10-10
Packaged: 2018-01-20 21:41:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 39
Words: 374,102
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1526744
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sperare/pseuds/Sperare
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In a world where the population is barely holding steady, those of either gender who are capable of bearing children are considered a prized commodity. In all places beyond Westchester, their rights are few--and, with Erik Lehnsherr poised to tear down the gates of the city, even that last haven is on the brink of destruction. But, for Charles Xavier, the consequences of conquest may prove to be more personal than political. No one quite knows why Erik is so set on capturing his old friend and partner in the war against Shaw: Charles is no bearer, and he's disinclined to aid Erik in firmly establishing mutant supremacy once and for all. </p><p>Charles, however, is all too aware of Erik's reasons. Erik knows things about him that no one else does--things which, if brought to light, would would mean surrendering far more than just a kingdom.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So... this story. It's long. I mean, really long. As in, at the moment it's 578 pages. I told myself I was going to finish it before I started posting, but I kind of need a boost to push on through the final part, and actually posting the beginning gives me that motivation. 
> 
> All mistakes are my own, so, if you catch one, let me know and I'll go back and edit it. 
> 
> Enjoy!

Moira died on a Tuesday. There’s a inviolable importance to the date: of all the things Charles has lost, the sharp, agonizing snap of a broken bond is something he never had to experience, simply because he never had it with Moira to begin with—there is no physical reminder of what he’s lost. Carving out a day of the week is the best he can do. It’s an inadequate reminder, but the approach and arrival of that day is always a slow grinding torture, and that’s at least _something_. It’s a small hurt, comparatively, but gods know he’d do anything to _feel_ —to reflect in the physical just what she meant, and what’s suddenly been wrenched out of him. He’ll take what he can get.  
  
In the Old World, they likely could have saved her. The wound itself had been superficial—exactly as it was meant to be. Killing her outright would have defeated the purpose. The message had been entirely for Charles: a note, speared to Moira’s shoulder with a knife. A poisoned dagger. Raven had wanted him to watch her suffer—to die slowly.  
  
 _You would deny your king for_ this _?_  
  
Seven words should hardly be sufficient to articulate the reasons behind the murder of his wife, but when he’s alone in his bedchamber, the reality of it plays in his mind on an infinite loop, uninterrupted when there’s no one there to break it for him—and the logic of it morphs into a mess that’s not so unthinkable after all. If, as some believe, the world was created in seven days, surely his world can just as easily be taken apart with seven words.  
  
 _You would deny your king for_ this _?_  
  
The “u” in “your” was unreadable with the knife stabbed through it, and parts of the other words were messy with Moira’s blood, but the message was clear.  
  
 _You would deny your king for_ this _?_  
  
“He’s not my king,” Charles says aloud to his empty room, tracing his fingers over the parchment. His touch lingers over the dried blood—the only part of Moira’s body that isn’t rotting below the ground. The blood has wrinkled the material and rippled it into bubbled, uneven lumps of paper marred by liquid damage. It’s comforting, in a way, to see physical proof of the effects of her death.  
  
No, Erik is not his king. Nor did Erik kill Moira.  
  
Though he is no doubt glad to see her dead.  
  
That it was Charles’ own sister that did the killing—surely, it offers Erik a validation for his beliefs. Moira was human. Without Charles’ intervention, she would have found herself a second-class citizen, the same as any other human. That he took her and made her his queen—that she is the mother of his heir—not only turned heads in all the other regions, but in his own as well. Figures. Different is surprising. Different is shocking.  
  
He swipes his fingers over the paper again. So fragile. Everything is, these days.  
  
People within his kingdom obey his laws: insofar as he is able, he has ensured that humans are treated fairly. But for him to _marry_ a human—it seemed too bizarre an action for even the relatively progressive citizen to swallow. Only the most radical—those who, like him, favor full co-existence between humans and mutants—approve. And there are not so many of those people. Fewer now, with war sweeping up from the South—with the promise of subjugation and annihilation for those who believe differently from the conquering lord.  
  
That he married Moira regardless of politics and still managed to retain power is a testament to his general popularity—and to the fact that, human or not, she was a bearing woman, capable of giving him children. In these times, the ability to bear is precious, no matter who you are. Most may think Moira shouldn’t have been allowed to marry the king, but nearly all would agree that she ought to have had children with a mutant: the promise of a child, and a mutant one at that. Subsume the human genes with mutant ones, and also create children, all in one go. Many would consider that fortuitous.  
  
But not in a marriage to their king.  
  
And certainly not if they knew what _he_ is.  
  
They do not. With any luck—not that luck has done much for him lately—they never will. Only five people in the world know: three of them are dead, one of them—Erik—has given his word to never tell, and the remaining individual—Raven, ironically—will heed any command Erik gives her.  
  
If there’s any mercy in the world at all, the truth will end with them.  
  
If, indeed, it is _allowed_ to end. Erik has given no indication that he is inclined to let it.  
  
And that? It _matters_. Because the sound of canons suggests that Erik may get his way.  
  
But not _yet_.  
  
“And never easily, hmm?” Charles murmurs, strolling over toward the bassinette by the far wall. An eager gurgle comes from within, and, despite the situation, Charles’ face splits into an easy grin and he reaches down, slipping his arms under his son and lifting him to his chest.  
  
The repetition of rocking is soothing, both to him and to his son; the outlet for his nervous energy is welcome: he circles the room, counting out his steps and bouncing the baby against his chest. Three times he passes his desk, stubbornly ignoring the letters spread over it and the maps peeking out from beneath those letters. On the fourth pass, David begins to fuss, as if sensing his father’s discomfort. Gods. Does everything have to be so difficult?  
  
Breathing out a sigh, he presses David against his shoulder and moves to settle in the desk chair.  
  
It’s not as though he hasn’t read the letters and studied the maps. He’s done little else in the last few days, and the months before that centered on these documents almost entirely. He could likely recite them from memory by this point—not that he ever would. Thank you, no—far better to scrub them from his mind—from existence. They represent the sum of his failings, of the motivations and desires that have caused this catastrophe. They _are_ his downfall.  
  
“Could I have done anything differently?” he murmurs to his son, leaning David back in his arms and gazing down into the infant’s startlingly blue eyes. Charles’ eyes. The baby has most of Moira’s face, but at seven months, it’s safe to assume that the blue color of David’s eyes isn’t going to fade. He’ll favor Charles in that, at least. Hopefully not in much else. With any luck, his personality will be his mother’s. Moira ought to live on in some small way, and while it’s probably selfish to hope that David will grow to be a spitting image of the wife Charles loved, it’s a hope that festers, selfishly, desperately, and with so much grief that some days it chokes him. She was a light to him, and imaging that light snuffed out—he simply can’t conceive of it. If there is any justice in the universe at all, she’ll live on in her son.  
  
David smiles and giggles, waving his chubby fists until Charles reaches forward and lets the baby grab one of his fingers. Apparently, this is the height of entertainment, because David squeals with delight and tries to shake his father’s limb.  
  
“Your faith in me is unparalleled, darling,” he remarks dryly. “And probably misplaced.”  
  
A knock on the door startles him out of his conversation with his son. Turning his head, he tucks David back against his chest and calls out permission to enter. Seconds later, the door creaks on its hinges and pushes in: out of sheer habit, he tenses, and it’s foolish—so entirely foolish, no one has ever attacked him in his own home—but the letters on the desk live in his head, and someday, it won’t be a friend coming through that door.  
  
Today, though, it is only Armando. Most definitely a friend.  
  
“My Lord,” he greets respectfully, inclining his head, though the white-knuckled grip that he has on the doorframe speaks of urgency and a direness that Charles can neither embrace nor deny.  
  
Charles nods in acknowledgement. “Armando. What news?”  
  
“We’ve lost the lower town.”  
  
Disappointing, but not unexpected. This is—well, no point in denying it: the proverbial noose that has been hanging around his neck for the past few days draws tighter. “I’m needed in the war room, then?” he asks, offering a tired smile, because no matter the circumstances, his men will take their cues from their leader, and there is always hope. There will _always_ be hope insofar as it is up to him.  
  
Even if he has to create it for his men, it will exist.  
  
“I’m afraid so,” Armando answers.  
  
“Well then.” What to say? Lie? Armando knows—understands what the loss of the lower town means, perhaps better than Charles, who has lived in the mansion his whole life. For someone like Armando, who came from the town….  
  
Armando doesn’t comment as Charles turns away from him and moves across the room to settle his son back into the bassinette. Best to let him rest now: he’ll have precious little peace in the coming days. “Send for the nanny to watch him, if you would?” he calls over his shoulder. Armando leans out into the hallway to do as he asks—the rasp of cloth against the old polished wood of the door says as much—nearly before Charles is done speaking.  
  
It’s… somewhat soothing to know he has good men like Armando. Brave men. Men who have always served him well. But, as much as their presence soothes him, it is equally as acidic: he has let them down. If anything, their loyalty to him is what has placed them in the line of fire in the first place. Guilt burns, and a few nights ago, he had woken from a dream where it had eaten through his chest and left a gaping hole. Erik reached in and pulled his heart out, smiling contentedly as it pulsed in his hand, dripping, not blood, but something green and noxious—guilt in visible form—back down through the hole to continue eating at other organs.  
  
Charles doesn’t get much sleep anymore.  
  
Carefully, he pushes the sheets of David’s crib aside. Most nights are spent watching over his son anyway. Sleep is… a luxury, and he’d scarcely prioritize that over his son—just as he will not prioritize pride over a kingdom. He will do what he must to save those he can.  
  
“Fight or flight, hmmm?” he murmurs, leaning down to press as kiss to his son’s forehead once the baby is settled. David is none too pleased about having been returned to the bassinette, and he fusses under Charles’ touch, but, thankfully, he doesn’t give in to the outright cries that are threatening, and which would, quite likely, be the last straw. His nerves are simply too frayed to hear his son in discomfort.  
  
It’s too soon to tell, but moments like this one—it’s terribly easy to imagine that David has inherited at least some measure of his father’s telepathy. He seems to be a bit of empath, to be honest, which, as Sharon Xavier would explain when she could be bothered to speak to her troublesome offspring, is how he also started: picking up snatches of those closest to him and reading their moods. Apparently, like David, he responded accordingly: good of his son, to refrain from crying, simply to spare his father the discomfort.  
  
Regardless, his gift is not something he would wish on his son—but David is perfect, and if this is what he is, then it must be perfect too.  
  
Charles slips out the door to the room just as the nanny slips in. He gives her a gentle smile and a pushes a burst of calm toward her: her cheeks are too white, and her mouth is pinched. To soothe that as best he can seems such a little thing.  
  
It’s the little things that often count the most.  
  
“Thank you,” he tells her. “Please don’t take him out of this room. And call for me if he needs anything.”  
  
She nods fervently, setting her slim red braids to flopping. She’s a good girl, quiet, but with a quick intelligence that’s obvious in her interactions with David. Too young for what she’s being forced to endure, obviously, but, then, he can’t imagine anyone is ever old enough to be faced with war. He certainly isn’t. Twenty-nine—gods help him, most days he’s sure he isn’t old enough for fatherhood, let alone for ruling a kingdom and fighting a war.  
  
Satisfied that she understands his instructions, he closes the door behind him and falls into step behind Armando. The man is dressed almost sloppily today: olive trousers scuffed with dirt at the knees, and his long dark brown tunic belted, but pulled out to different lengths, leaving chunks of it hanging more loosely against his waist than others, as if he’d slept in it. There’s a good chance of that: if memory serves, it’s the same set of clothing he was wearing yesterday. Understandable. They stopped bothering with uniforms in the war room days ago—too easily identifiable, when it began to look like they’d have to flee—and from there their state of dress has only deteriorated: changing clothes seems a waste of time in these hours, when every second might as well be borrowed time, and picking through a wardrobe requires effort better expended elsewhere—  
  
Oh. Charles hasn’t changed either. That is—has he been up all night? Apparently. Thinking back—yes, the sun had gone down, and he’d lit a candle, dozed at his desk at one point, woken, and read well into the early morning hours when the room had seemed brighter. That must have been the rising of the sun, though he hadn’t consciously attributed the brightening to the coming of morning.  
  
That at least explains why he’s still dressed in his loose blue tunic. Like Armando, he has it belted at the waist, falling down to cover most of his backside before it ends in favor of his black trousers and leather boots that cover his calves. There’s even a dagger on his belt, which he never takes off these days (neither the dagger nor the belt). A gun might be more effective over the long range, but he’s got soldiers for that: if they fail, his capture will result in a situation where he’ll be much more in need of a weapon made for a close combat fight—and, anyway, Erik has done quite a good job at monopolizing the production of firearms outside of Westchester. Now that he’s sacked Westchester’s weapons factories as well….  
  
 A knife it is, then.  
  
Stabbing Erik is probably an unreasonable hope—Erik will no doubt be expecting some such attempt—but he’ll be damned if he doesn’t try.  
  
He’ll probably be damned anyway.  
  
They reach the war room within a few minutes with nearly no words exchanged between the two of them. There’s very little to say, and saving one’s energy extends even to conversation, though no one has said as much (a tricky conundrum of logic that draws a faint smile, though why he’s bothering isn’t quite clear).  
  
The war room is rumored to have been originally built in fear of a cataclysmic event, which, given the way history played out, was not an unreasonable fear to have. Whatever its original purposes, it’s impervious to most outside assaults—though, once the mansion is taken, it will become a death trap just as surely as any other room with only one exit would be. An enemy might not be able to blast in through the walls, but starvation from inside would quickly make that unnecessary: you’ll open the door yourself once you run out of food or water.  
  
“Armando tells me the lower town has been taken,” Charles says by way of greeting as he strides to the front of the room and settles himself down at the head of the table around which his men are seated. Many of his top generals are out trying to hold the defenses, leaving these men as their proxies—glorified messengers, really, who will carry Charles’ messages to his generals and, in turn, the generals’ messages to Charles.  
  
That does not imply that they are inept or inferior. In most cases, it actually implies that they’re young—promising, many of them, but not old enough to have high command yet.  
  
No one speaks. Charles resists the urge to knead at his temples: silence is answer enough.  
  
“Has there been any word from Boston?” If the region bordering them to the north had been able to make some sort of contact… They stand to fall next if Erik continues his campaign, and, as things are currently, they and the Upper North are the only two of the sixteen regions not currently under Erik’s power. Genosha has always been the seat of greatest power, but until Shaw began his campaign to bring all the other regions directly under its command, it had held no official governing power over the other regions.  
  
When Erik killed Shaw, the conquest was supposed to stop.  
  
That hadn’t been the case.  
  
It’s only a memory, but it’s an icy one, enough to prompt him to drive his fingers into the edge of the table at the mere thought of it. Back before Erik knew what Charles was, before their debates became personal and more dangerous than Charles could have possibly imagined originally—once upon a time, there had been hope. His own hope.  
  
In some ways, he’s dug his own grave. He ought never to have grown so close to Erik. If he hadn’t….  
  
Erik would probably have found out anyway.  
  
Erik is, after all, terribly intelligent—in the most literal way. He has used that mind for horrible things—for things that make the pillow hot on one side, and Charles’ eyelids filled with sand, that make Charles’ legs itch until he paces the floor relentlessly, until he realizes he’s gone nights without sleeping and has found that he can no longer bring himself to care for such trivial things as rest.  
  
“No, there’s been no word from Boston, my Lord,” Scott tells him with a scowl.  
  
Ah. Well, not the best way to force him out of his memories, but it’s something at least, and those memories—he’d prefer that they remain buried forever.  
  
That doesn’t make it anymore pleasurable to face Scott. The boy has every right to be displeased: his older brother Alex is down holding the line, and no word from Boston means nothing good for his brother’s fate. Any of their fates.  
  
Charles sighs and steeples his fingers under his chin. “Then we’ll have to assume that help isn’t coming.” Someone hands him a map, and he takes it wordlessly, smoothing it out in front of him on the table, feeling the paper crackle under his fingers as he lays it out. “Unfortunately, we’ll also have to gamble on Boston still being suitable for a retreat. They’re our only possible route to the Upper North. Even so, while our scouts maintain that Lehnsherr hasn’t split his force, we can’t rule out the possibility that he’s infiltrated the region more subtly. If he’s installed his own people in the court, possibly even managed to hold the ruler hostage, we would never know—not quickly enough to change our plans.” He finally gives in and, though he doesn’t touch his temples, he does scrub a hand over his face. “With time we would have, obviously, but if this is a recent development, Lehnsherr would have been able to count on the threat to our southern borders being too imminent: we’ve had no time or reason to notice a puppet king when our energies have been directed elsewhere.”  
  
Armando, who has settled himself at Charles’ right hand, as is his privilege, nods. Thank the gods for Armando. He’d be out in the field if he were well, and it’s wrong to be so thankful for a prior injury, but his support is invaluable at the moment. “Should we assume that we can’t call upon either Boston or the Upper North for safe passage?”  
  
Charles taps his finger over the words “Upper North” as they’re written on the map, in a mess of curly and overly superfluous font. “We’ll send a delegation to Boston. Our refugees will retreat on a different path, but we’ll send a few armed officers to the court as the refugees move. At worst, they’ll create a distraction to occupy the Boston officials while the refugees move through their territory and into the Upper North, which we can be reasonably sure Lehnsherr hasn’t yet taken; at best, we’ll find that Boston hasn’t been compromised.”  
  
Scott appears less than convinced; beside him, Sean looks equally as uncertain, though he’s more understated in his methods. Scott is far too attached to glowering as a means of expression. It’s difficult to blame him: the possibility of being penned in on all sides is not a pleasant one, and while Charles would like to court optimism and hope it’s not the case, he knows Erik too well to believe he’ll fail to be thorough.  
  
“I know very well that it’s an insufficient plan,” he admits, meeting Scott’s eye. “Lehnsherr will know we’ve evacuated our capital. He’ll be looking for refugees. If he truly has infiltrated Boston, a delegation will only distract him for a very short time. But we have no alternative. We’ll try to keep the route the refugees take as remote as possible, and we’ll split them up into groups.”  
  
Admitting weakness is never pleasant, but the facts are staring him in the face. Maybe they should have moved sooner—who knows. It’s hard to tell what would have done the most good: Shaw, and, later, Erik, has long since made it obvious that any movement toward the South was going to be pointless. Charles’ people would only be walking straight into the Genoshan army. North has been the only option nearly since the conquest began: Erik has, more than likely, been taking measures to cut off their escape route nearly since he came to power.  
  
Knowing that turns Charles brain inside out, scraping for answers, for some way he could have _seen_ earlier. Erik had been so fixated on Shaw—had lived a life where killing Shaw was the entire culmination—and common sense would dictate that a man like that would not suddenly learn to live his life free from obsessions. Erik has learned to live by pushing himself toward an end—toward obtaining something. Foreseeing a shift in what he was after once Shaw was gone should have been obvious, but Charles had never thought—how _could_ he have thought?—that it would turn into this. If he had, though—if he’d managed to just _see_ —he could have countered Erik’s tactics earlier.  
  
He swallows down the bile pushing up his throat.  
  
Erik is a brilliant mind. Not as brilliant tactically as Charles, but, in this case, it hardly matters: even a brilliant tactical mind cannot create a solution when he has nothing to work with. The lay of the land, knowing the games of misdirection--it may allow him to smuggle a good many of his people past any of Erik’s forces that have infiltrated the Upper North and Boston, but it will not save his kingdom. Truthfully, it might not even be much good for smuggling. When one is boxed in on three sides and the enemy has the means to make inroads into the fourth, even a gifted tactician cannot pull something from nothing.  
  
Doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be attempted.  
  
“Ask for volunteers,” he orders solemnly. “Those who are willing to go first, and by the more main roads. Make it clear to them that they will likely be detained. Send them with weapons: let them engage those who stop them, and then tell them to flee away from the roads. They’ll draw Lehnsherr’s men into pursuit, guaranteeing that the way they tried to pass will at least be open while they’re being hunted down. It will be a very limited window of time, but it will be enough to guarantee a clear—or at least a significantly less heavily blocked—passage through that area for those who come behind them. The first group will be lost, obviously, but the second will have a good chance of making it through.”  
  
Around the table, glances are exchanged. There’s a silent conversation taking place, though the outcome is already set: they’ll fall into agreement with him. It’s not because his plan is particularly appealing, but only because it is the best of a batch of atrocious options. “If we try to save everyone,” he says, the words like ash in his mouth, “we’ll save no one.” Taking a very deep breath, he adds, “I will remain in the castle as a decoy while the groups leave. My son will proceed with the second group.”  
  
Staying here will mean being captured. And he’ll slit his own throat before he lets Erik get a hold of him. It may even make a point. He’ll fight right up until the end, of course, take as many people with him as he can: that will give his own people a better chance of making it through the Upper North, but once capture is imminent, it would be better—  
  
“It’s too much of a risk. You would be too much of an asset to Lehnsherr if you were captured.”  
  
Oh. Kitty. All around the table, those who understand what she’s missed let their eyes drop and wander to other parts of the room. He doesn’t need his telepathy to recognize that no one envies him having to explain to her what he’s planning. And, gods, he hates it more than any of them do.  
  
Kitty. A sweet girl, and also a very competent fighter. A mutant too. Someday, an incredibly formidable one, though for now she’s young and not fully in command of her power.  
  
“It’s too dangerous to allow Lehnsherr the chance to detain you,” she says again, pressing her hands palm down against the surface of the table. When she meets his eye, he can see how wan her skin has become, likely from lack of sleep and an abundance of stress. Perceived guilt at being the one to broach this topic may also play a role.  
  
Charles resists the urge to laugh, bitterly and bitingly and with all the exhaustion he wishes he didn’t have within him. She’s referring to his telepathy, of course—they all are. To think that’s all it is—to not know… How lovely it must be, not to understand that there are far worse things inherent in him—things that it would be disastrous for Erik to access. So long as there’s no bond between him and Erik, he can fight, can refuse to use his powers for Erik’s purposes—but any child he has may inherit his powers, and a child is easy to mold, easy to take and warp for any purpose Erik may want.  
  
Would Erik do that? Rip a baby out of Charles’ arms and twist it to his own purposes?  
  
Maybe. Maybe not. But he’ll be damned to hell if he sticks around to find out.  
  
“I don’t intend to be captured, my dear,” he says gently, waiting for the implications of that statement to settle.  
  
It hits at varying levels of quickness, bombarding those who hadn’t realized: he can see jaws drop and faces pale, eyes harden and breath stall, but it is Armando—though he likely understood even before Kitty spoke—who is the one who finally leans forward and fixes Charles with a hard, unyielding stare. “No,” he says simply. “To stay and act as a decoy, with the intention of killing yourself when you find you’re on the brink of capture—you are our _king_. We swore an oath to protect you.”  
  
Charles nods. “Yes. And I swore an oath to protect the people of my region.”  
  
From about halfway down the table, Angel—an exotic, dark-haired girl—smacks her hand down on the table. He took her on nearly a year ago, back after her mother was killed in a riot between humans and mutants, precipitated by his marriage to Moira. Now, all heads turn toward her, and even given the circumstances, she sits up a bit taller under the attention. “And when you’re dead? Can you protect them then?”  
  
No worse than if he remains alive, quite frankly. “You’re missing the—“  
  
“Say you… went with Lehnsherr.” Quickly, she raises a hand, forestalling comments, which is almost unnecessary: all the air seems to have been sucked from the room. “Might you be able to do more good if you had his ear? It’s… not a secret that he respects you.”  
  
Respect might be too generous a term. Erik may hold some measure of that particular characteristic for him, but it’s mitigated by his other intentions. Admiration might be a better word, though even that is wrapped up in obsession, and bits of Erik’s regard stem from pride at the thought of owning what he admires. He certainly does not respect Charles enough to consider the possibility that he, Erik Lehnsherr, might fail.  
  
Charles forces out a small, thin smile. “I do applaud you for thinking creatively, and every option needs to be examined, but please believe me when I tell you, no one has considered that avenue more extensively than I have. Lehnsherr may be inclined to listen to some of what I have to say, but I have very little confidence that he would agree with me to the extent that he would act according to my suggestions, and I have even less assurance that my influence would be worth the ill he could use me to create.”  
  
Angel doesn’t look convinced, but she does nod and duck her head, folding her hands together on the table.  
  
“If no one has any other comments—“  
  
“My Lord,” Armando interrupts, shoving his chair back from the table and standing. “We cannot allow you to do this.”  
  
How did he find himself so lucky as to be served by such loyalty? He doesn’t deserve it. Not at all. Not when his decisions—his association with Erik—is what has pressed these people into this position.  
  
And they don’t even know the truth of it.  
  
Filling his lungs with so much air that it burns, Charles slowly exhales and looks Armando in the eye. “There’s no choice. And I am giving you an order. You swore me an oath of loyalty. Would you break that now?”  
  
Armando’s jaw clenches, and there’s obvious anger in his eyes, but he doesn’t act on it. His only answer is a small, clipped, “No. No, Sir, I would not.”  
  
Charles nods. “Good. In that case, please carry this information to the generals: as it stands now, the enemy line is past the point where the tunnels beneath the mansion come out. The generals will need to know to keep the fighting going as long as possible so that we can prepare to evacuate the people out via the tunnels under the mansion. Once the people have reached the end of the tunnels, the army is to let the line fall and allow the enemy inside the city walls, thus drawing them further away from the exit to the tunnels. Once the enemy forces are within the city walls, their view of the tunnel exits will be blocked by a hill, and the citizens will leave the tunnels and head north. Are there questions?”  
  
No one asks any. Not surprising. It’s relatively simple. The tunnels come out two miles away from the mansion, and the goal is to evacuate the people, so many of whom are those who took refuge when it became clear that the outer towns were going to be overrun.  
  
“We’ll need a contingency of soldiers to remain behind in the mansion, lest they find out too quickly that everyone has been evacuated. Collect volunteers. I will remain in my chambers. With any luck, Lehnsherr will be too distracted attempting to break down my door to make the effort to chase after our citizens once he realizes that they have gone. If we truly have fortune on our side, he may delegate someone else to lead the fight against those soldiers who remain behind in the mansion while he pursues me.”  
  
No one likes his plan. _He_ doesn’t even like his plan. But it’s the only one he’s got, and—well, do the best with what one has.  
  
“Dismissed,” he manages to say as he stands, though the words feel lumpy in his throat, reminiscent of that one time when, as a child, he tried to eat mud.  
  
His men stand with him. The solemnity of the moment is nearly overwhelming: many of these people won’t survive the day, and, even if they do, he won’t be seeing them again. Come tomorrow, their only remaining monarch will be a infant boy who has been smuggled to another land.  
  
Speaking of that infant boy… “Scott. Sean.”  
  
At the sound of their names, both young men pull away from the group, which is leaving the room in measured, robotic strides. Just keeping going. It’s a good war motto. Function until you cannot anymore. Calm. Calculated. Like a machine. And for godssake, don’t feel if you can help it.  
  
Charles never really mastered that last bit.  
  
“I’ll need you to take my son,” he says once they come to attention in front of him.  
  
As soon as those words trip off his tongue, he can feel his world well and truly crumble. The battle may end tomorrow, but, for Charles, the taste of defeat is already rank in his mouth.  
  
His son is everything. And now he will send him away.  
  
Truly, some days it feels as though whatever affection he still has left for Erik has boiled away, mixed with the vapors of anger and a stifling bitterness.  
  
If only that were really the case.  
  
If only.  
  
If only….


	2. Chapter 2

Daggers are a bit like a first kiss: beautiful, deadly, and very personal. He knows the one currently in his hand as intimately as he knows anything: it’s weight, its balance, how it looks flying through the air, tumbling over and over itself. He even chose the carvings on the handle—the markings of House Xavier—when he had the dagger commissioned as a birthday gift for Raven when she turned sixteen.  
  
He knows how the dagger looks sticking out of his wife’s shoulder.  
  
At some point tonight, he’ll kiss it across his own throat.  
  
But, for now, he studies it in the dying light of day. The candles have just been lit, and the beams of light flicker and snake across the metal, at times reflecting off onto his own skin. Even with the three large windows on the south side looking out over the garden, in the night the room becomes cozy: he’s lit the fire, taking in the warmth and the brightness of it. Up until three months ago, the mansion had electricity, but since Erik cut the power flow from the dam from whence the electricity came, they’ve existed on candles and the fireplaces. It’s not so bad: there’s a certain charm to it.  
  
Not long, now, and, just thinking about it, he turns the knife over in his hands again and again as he reclines in the armchair, staring intermittently between the knife and the chessboard on the table in front of him.  
  
It’s the same chessboard he and Erik used the night before they left on campaign. For the first few months after Charles returned from Genosha, he’d left it as it had been, pieces set to the side, abandoned there when he and Erik couldn’t find the motivation to put them away properly. It’s been three years ago now, or thereabouts, from that day when he’d taken an injury and been dragged to a makeshift medical tent, Erik reportedly hovering over him worriedly, and, as a result, present when the doctor had discovered something far more damning than any injury could ever be.  
  
Once Erik breached Westchester’s outer defenses—once Charles had been unable to continue to deny that he was facing the beginning of the end—he’d reset the board, with only one exception.  
  
He’s tipped the white king—his color whenever he and Erik had played—onto its side and left it there, among all the other proud, tall pieces standing undisturbed on the game board.  
  
 _You’ve won. Is that what you want to hear?_ he thinks tiredly, flipping the dagger again.  
  
Because it’s undeniable now: Erik has won—or he soon will. All evening, he’s heard the fighting. It’s drifted up from the sprawling town built around the Westchester mansion, growing louder the closer it came. And now, finally, there are footsteps in the hall. He spares a glance for his son’s empty bassinette. Not so long now. Time to get into position.  
  
He may know how this will end. He may even consider it an inevitability—but he will do his upmost to change what he can. He’s not a violent man by nature, but he’s made his home here, and he’s seen it torn up, and if can prevent more bloodshed by cutting off the head of the snake before it strikes again, then, damn it, he will do what can.  
  
Calmly, he rises from his seat and marches across the room, pushing his back to the wall beside the door. He will only get one chance, and if the universe has any mercy left, it _will_ be Erik that is foolish enough to come through that door first. Charles will have only split seconds to look, to ensure that it isn’t, somehow, one of his own men.  
  
And he will not have another chance.  
  
The sound of footsteps grows closer, drifting in like a loud rumbling thunder—the kind that draws over Westchester in the summers, heralding the storms from which he hid as a child, and in whose puddles he played in the aftermath. The memory is charming, and he lets himself smile a little: there are worse things to have lingering in his mind when he dies. If he has to clutch cold steel in his hand, he might as well have something softer in his mind.  
  
That does, though, bring up a relevant point: the dagger is metal. There’s no question that, if Erik stretches out his senses, he’ll sense it—and that’s a chance that must be taken. If it seems that Erik has detected him, he’ll pull back—will end his own life while Erik’s heart still beats. Either he and Erik will go together, or Charles will go alone. Erik could stop him, of course, but of all the things he expects Charles to do, how could Erik possibly foresee _that_? No—not when Erik truly cannot see why Charles finds the prospect of being under his command so horrible.  
  
If there had ever been any question about that, the letters on the desk across the room cleared up that doubt. Over and over he’s read Erik’s letters, and he knows the man’s mind and intensions. Erik has, unwittingly, given him a weapon he never intended: foreknowledge, and the ability to plan.  
  
Muffled voices echo in the corridor outside. Something angry. Shouting. Charles swallows down a breath and closes his eyes. His heart is beating a frantic rhythm against his chest, but his hands are steady, and his body doesn’t shake. Any moment now, any moment….  
  
The sound of the lock clicking. Erik. It’s Erik in person, then. His hold on the dagger tightens. One chance.  
  
When the door blasts inward, Charles instinctively flinches back as it goes careening in and, its inertia arrested by its hinges, slams back to smash into the wall. It’s a heavy wooden door: there will be marks. The wood paneling will need replacing. He chokes on a laugh: maybe Erik will bother to do it, just for the sake of remembrance. He’s probably fond of those nights they spent here together, talking late into the evening and playing chess, in the time before they moved out to the front to chase Shaw.  
  
No more of that. Never again.  
  
And the end begins now.  
  
The moment Erik steps through the door, it becomes clear that he’s sensed the metal in the dagger. The tells are there in every inch of his body: in the coil of muscles ready to spring; in how his arms dart upward to block, lightening quick, even as his eyes seek out Charles’ own, hungry for contact. Stupid, to feel a flash of disappointment—that he and Erik—they could have been something more—could have—but he can do nothing for it, and he’s done his part, played the decoy, and now he’d best give Erik something to worry about beyond finding the missing citizens of Westchester.  
  
Charles moves the dagger to rake over his own jugular before Erik can move.  
  
And then it’s not there.  
  
It’s simply gone, spinning through the air, and tumbling to the ground.  
  
Oh.  
  
 _Oh._ What now?  
  
He and Erik are left staring at each other, sharing looks of warring disbelief, both filled with grief, though of very different kinds. No one speaks, and all that’s audible is their sharp panting and the silence that underlies it, pushing up and pulling everything into a sphere of suspension: the whole world has slowed down to this moment, when he and Erik stand scarcely six feet apart, holding what’s left of the world between them.  
  
Erik speaks first.  
  
 _“Charles,”_ he whispers, and the sound comes out shocked, almost sick, as his gaze drops to the blade on the floor, and then back up to Charles’ neck.  
  
The room breaks into a flurry of motion.  
  
Charles hasn’t planned for this. He was supposed to be dead, and this isn’t borrowed time that he wants. He can’t— _won’t_ —fall prey to this, be what Erik wants him to be, can’t be taken, captured, made something he’s not, and he won’t, he won’t—  
  
His hands close around one of the longer, slimmer logs for the fire, and while he cannot remember even crossing the room, it fits into his fingers and precipitates a small swell of comfort. Not enough, obviously, but it’s a weapon, and he will use what he has, the only thing he can get.  
  
If he loses—if he _loses_ —what then? He can’t even think, can’t imagine—  
  
“Charles,” Erik says again, sharper this time. Somehow, he’s ended up halfway across the room as well, and there’s a trail of furniture in his wake. Not the chess set, though—not the table or the chairs around it. He’s allowing Charles that last barrier—and Charles has no doubt that it _is_ an allowance and not an oversight. “Put that down.” His brows wrinkles, consternated, probably because wood is not something he can control. “Charles—“  
  
“Oh, calm down,” he snarls. “I can’t kill myself with a piece of wood.” He probably can’t even kill _Erik_ , but he’s going to give it his best try.  
  
Six months ago, he hadn’t been certain he’d be able to do this. That final blow is always an uncertainty, and while he’s killed men, he’s never killed someone—someone—this is _Erik_.  
  
If it weren’t for that ache—that hollow, dead mess, he couldn’t do this. But that space inside him—it’s as empty as the bassinette by the far wall and as lifeless as his wife.  
  
He’ll be able to administer that killing blow now. He has to be sure of it. He has to _do_ it.  
  
“Charles—“ Erik raises his hands in a universal gesture of surrender, and takes a step closer. “ _Charles_ ,” he says again when Charles flinches backward, nearly to the wall now. “I’m not here to hurt you—“  
  
“You’ve conquered the remnants of the known world. I rather think this is bigger than just your intentions toward me, Erik—not that I trust those either.”  
  
A hint of stress pulls the features of Erik’s face tight. “The world is crumbling around us,” he says softly, his tone lilting and gentle, nearly coaxing—and it’s so at odds with how every word is poison. “The population is barely holding steady, and every year more mutants are killed by a desperate, decreasing human population. You _know_ this. It’s not nice, and it’s not pretty, but something has to be done.”  
  
This is good. If can keep Erik talking, maybe he can get to the window. This is the fourth story. He likely won’t survive that kind of drop, especially not if he lands badly. Even if he does survive, separated from Erik like that, he can coax the mind of one of Erik’s men into seeing him as a threat to be eliminated. He just has to get away from Erik.  
  
As subtly as possible, he slips his foot to the side. Obviously, it’s not subtle enough: Erik’s eyes dart toward the motion and then back to Charles’ face; the frown on his face becomes more pronounced. Hopefully, though, Erik will think he’s just circling, trying to get to the door. They’ll circle around the chessboard and its chairs, one move after another, playing about a centerpiece where the future has already been decided: Erik has won, but Charles can still choose to tip his final piece and concede rather than be taken forcefully.  
  
“And killing my pro-mutant wife contributed to a better world _how_ , exactly?” Another step. Then another. Erik’s eyes follow him, but he lets Charles move, and, yes, there he goes, shifting to place himself more firmly between Charles and the door.  
  
“I didn’t kill your wife,” Erik says.  
  
“Maybe not, but can you really say you didn’t know what Raven was planning?”  
  
To Erik’s credit, he doesn’t bother to lie. Charles will give him that, at least: Erik is not an untruthful person in general. He’s open with his motives and his desires, and though he keeps his history and his heart closed off, he doesn’t lie about the things he plans to do. He may not _share_ his plans, but he doesn’t offer up false thoughts. He’s frank. Clear in his beliefs.  
  
And so wildly wrong that some days Charles wonders that he too wasn’t swept away by Erik’s sheer passion.  
  
“I didn’t help her.”  
  
“But you didn’t stop her.”  
  
Erik balks, as if physically slapped. “Why in the world would I?”  
  
Oh, yes, why indeed? It’s not as if premeditated murder is _wrong_ , and why should it matter that Charles _loved_ his wife? That his son no longer has a mother? Why should Erik care that his actions ripped Moira away and left Charles in a state where, some days, he considered pitching himself out the window months prior to this moment?  
  
Erik seems to realize that they’ve hit a wall in their conversation. He’s not sorry for his surprise—that much is very clear—but he does appear to notice that his logic won’t get him anywhere with Charles. Not now, and not like this. That apparently matters enough to make him change tactics: whatever it takes, no doubt, to talk Charles down from this suicide bent.  
  
Fat chance of that. Erik knows him not at all if he thinks this is actually a death wish. No matter how much he misses Moira, death isn’t appealing. But he cannot become a weapon. He cannot. To become what Erik wants, to wake every morning knowing that he’s bound up in custom and ceremony and obsession, that biology has betrayed him, and that his life is being used to harm others—he won’t suffer that. He won’t inflict his potential for harm on others. He won’t inflict that on himself. One of those two—it might be more important, but which it is, gods, he can’t tell anymore. And does it truly matter if the fear in his brain is more for himself than for others? That’s simply self-preservation, animal instinct. His motivations are irrelevant: he can be selfish all he likes, but his actions will still be justified by potentially saving thousands. With that many lives at stake, why does it matter what drives him to make that right decision?  
  
This _has_ to happen.  
  
A few more steps to the left leave him with his back to the window. Once he turns, he’ll have a very short period of time in which to execute this. Erik will catch on quickly, and he’s not so far across the room: he’ll have a chance to stop this.  
  
“Charles, you were never meant to be married to a human. You’re denying what you are.” His words are gentle, and he stretches out one hand, palm up and offering. “Doesn’t that hurt?”  
  
“I’m also a man,” he snarls, because this has and always will be a sticking point. Erik says he understands, but his actions would suggest otherwise. “Marrying a woman was no denial of that.”  
  
The open hand jerks, but Erik does not lower it. “I know you’re male. No one is trying to deny that male bearers are men, only that—“  
  
“Don’t finish that sentence,” he seethes.  
  
The anger must be contagious: where before there was only pacification or worry, there’s now a growing frustration. “You know as well as I do that our numbers are barely holding steady. Some years the population shrinks. It’s a waste to have two beings capable of bearing children married to each other. You owe it to the continuation of your own species to—“  
  
“ _No one_ owes that, Erik. Never. You of all people ought to understand what happens when people become expendable.”  
  
This conversation has happened before. The day Charles woke in the hospital, the day Erik asked the first time, then became more firm— _I want you by my side_ —and Charles, like the coward he sometimes wonders if he is, ran. He’d slipped out of the hospital under the cover of darkness, back to Westchester, mistakenly thinking that Erik couldn’t force his presence on him here if Charles did not deign to receive him. At that point, he’d still been naïve enough to think that Erik was no Shaw, that the war was over, that Erik had seen enough and experienced enough not to do this.  
  
He’d been wrong. So wrong. And now he’s paying for it.  
  
But he will not have this conversation again.  
  
Flinging his body around in a pivot that is more a slingshot of muscle than finesse, Charles lunges forward, hurtling past furniture and shoving away Erik’s shouts. He barrels for the window, the glass that will hurt, cut him—no, doesn’t matter anymore, doesn’t—  
  
His fingertips brush glass just as something solid and metal slams into his side, crunching into his ribs with a sick, wet _thunk_ that knocks him off his feet and sends him sprawling so hard that he slides several feet across the rug. He can feel the burns open on his elbows and his shoulder where his shirt slides, and for a moment he simply lies there, stunned.  
  
He’s not allowed that privilege for long. Before he can begin to get his breath back, metal snakes around his wrists and yanks them together. The same is true of his feet, and he has just a moment to think _I won’t be able to run_ before Erik is at his side, hoisting him upward into a sitting position. His hands dart to Charles’ sides, pressing relentlessly, fingers playing his ribs like piano keys, pushing to check for softness.  
  
Once Erik is satisfied that Charles is relatively unscathed, his face dissolves into a mess of fury: his mouth downturns so hard that his chin wrinkles and his eyes become mere slits in his face, though from what Charles can see, they’re spitting fury. “You little _fool_ ,” Erik snarls, grabbing Charles’ face in his hands and forcing their gazes to lock. “You will not—“ He bites off the words and lowers his chin, reigning himself in and settling, slipping down into hardened emotional steel and a core that understands results because it cannot bear to understand motives at this moment. “I know where your citizens are going, do you understand me? You’ve played well, but you have a traitor among your ranks, and I _know_ what you have planned, Charles. First group, second group—it doesn’t matter. Keep this up, and I will kill them _all_.”  
  
Charles doesn’t move: he only hangs there between Erik’s hands, feeling fingers carve out handholds over his cheekbones, but he can’t—can’t think. And then—it all comes at once—  
  
Oh, gods. David. If he kills them all—if he kills any of them—he might kill David.  
  
When asked later, Charles can’t recall what he starts screaming. He knows much of it is cursing—nearly as much is just plain unintelligible, though the pure, raw fury and grief of it must do the trick, because Erik jerks back, and while he doesn’t let go of Charles’ face, he does radiate shock at the sheer loss of control.  
  
“Not my son, don’t you touch my son, I will _kill_ you—“  
  
Erik hardly blinks, though the blankness is an indication that he didn’t know. It has to be: if Erik had known, he would allow some satisfaction when his level of knowledge was revealed. “Your son is with your people.” It’s not a question. Merely a statement, and Erik could not have chosen his tactics better: Charles quiets. “I’m not going to kill your son,” he says once he sees Charles stop, reduced to taking in great, quivering breaths. _His son, his son_. “Charles, please, listen to me—“ Reaching out, his fingers tangle with a lock of hair that has fallen down into Charles’ face during the mad struggle. Charles lets him, too dazed and single-minded to mount more of a struggle. “I want to make you happy, hmm? Do you understand?” He doesn’t wait for an answer, but plows on, all fever-bright eyes and earnest gaze seeking to meet Charles’ own.  
  
No. This—he can’t. He simply can’t see anything in Erik. He can’t see the room in front of him. Can’t, can’t, can’t. His son—it’s only his son that matters, and the infinite realm of possibilities that could hurt him, the knowledge that this man in front of him is the only thing he has left to play, to use to protect his boy.  
  
David, _David_ —he has to—has—  
  
He has to gain a hold, has to pull himself back in, but he’s unanchored—even the metal has uncurled from his wrists, leaving him loose and unmoored—and he can’t think. So badly, he needs sleep, an end to the war—oh gods, oh gods—anyone, if they will help him, this has to end.  
  
“If you kill my son—“  
  
Erik nods. “All right. Yes. You want your son. I understand. Give me a day. Just some time, and I’ll have him back to you. Will that make you happy?”  
  
Happy? No. He’s not sure he even knows what happy is anymore. He hasn’t been happy since Moira died. But David—having him back might calm the churning panic acting as a vice on his mind, squeezing and deadening thoughts of all else until he Just. Can’t. Think.  
  
“If you kill him—“  
  
Erik’s fingers brush Charles’ hair back, and their faces are very close now, but Charles can only stare, mesmerized and frozen. His fingers are tingling. Are they supposed to do that? He settles them on Erik’s arms and pushes his weight onto the limbs, hanging there, dazed. He knows he’s staring blankly at Erik’s face, but stopping—it’s out of the question. He can’t feel. Nothing is where it’s supposed to be, and even less is _what_ it’s supposed to be.  
  
“Yes, darling,” Erik murmurs, so close now that Charles can feel his breath, can see the soft pity in his eyes, “I know.” Maybe he does—his eyes say he does, or that he understands pain, and Charles _has_ always known that about him. Erik is careful now, though, taking Charles’ weight and skimming fingertips over Charles’ face, the tip of his pointer finger sliding up to smooth against the hairline in an attempt to soothe. “You’ve seen too much, Charles. Look at you.”  
  
He can’t imagine he looks anything other than a mess. He’s practically hanging off Erik, slumping and staring off in a daze. He knows he is, but the idea of movement is beyond his capabilities. Everything is over. He’s failed at _everything_ , even taking his own life, and people will pay for his incompetence and cowardice and sheer naivety.  
  
A few minutes, just a few, that’s all he’s asking….  
  
Let this not hurt for only a few minutes.  
  
But it will never not hurt, and yanking away is the next best thing—but his wrists are caught, the metal rewound around them....  
  
With so little room between them, it’s difficult for Erik to maneuver, but he manages somehow, pulling Charles in toward him and scooting his own knees forward so that when Charles flops bonelessly against him— _this is shock_ , his mind helpfully supplies—he’s able to lean back and take Charles’ weight fully. One quick grunt and a forceful heave propels Erik upwards with a jolt of motion from his legs, Charles with him: at some point his arms have been looped over Erik’s neck, hung by the metal holding his wrists together. He’s losing time. And he cannot stop staring blankly. Everything feels muted. Drugged.  
  
“ _Mein Gott_ , Charles,” Erik mutters when he takes Charles’ weight, hands firmly framing Charles’ waist and holding him up with the leverage his own body gives him. The words are in a language Charles doesn’t understand, though he’s learned many Old World languages. _German,_ Erik had told him. It’s been passed down through Erik’s family, and though it’s now occasionally spoken by some in Erik’s court, it isn’t the official language.  
  
It’s harsh. Sharp. Abrupt and to the point, like Erik. Or it sounds that way.  
  
Charles parts his lips and draws in breath through his mouth. Breath and words, like lifeblood, like—like—  
  
So numb. Everything is. But, if this is happening, he should say—has one thing that’s so ingrained, clutched so closely in the nights after Moira’s death, and maybe even before: “I’m telling you no, Erik,” he whispers blandly, though from the way Erik stiffens, it’s certain that he’s caught the words. “You can’t have me.”  
  
Like speaking to a small child—only Erik is far more clever, so much less fickle, and Charles did know that if it came down to those words as his last line of defense, he would not succeed.  
  
“Hush, Charles,” is the only answer Erik gives, relinquishing his grip on Charles’ hip in order to press his fingers up Charles’ nape and into his hair, tucking Charles’ head against Erik’s neck. The flesh is warm there, a little clammy with the remnants of their fight, but the feel of skin against his cheek is comforting. “Things will seem easier when you wake.”  
  
They won’t. But sleep seems so much better than staying awake. And he must do _something_. There is so little else. His options are gone. His kingdom is gone. He just—a puff of breath presses out of him, whispering between his lips and catching in his teeth.  
  
Words have never seemed less useful.  
  
He will not be heard.  
  
Perhaps never again.


	3. Chapter 3

Charles wakes to fingers in his hair. They move deliberately, with great care, plunging in and sliding down to brush his scalp in broad sweeps before drawing upward, combing through the strands and carding them to the side. He could almost imagine that this is what weaving is like—the repetitive motion of the shuttle, tangling things together, and pulling free at the end.  
  
He murmurs something unintelligible and pushes his head against the hand, enjoying the dull pressure and the light pull on his scalp. The feeling is calming, and, more importantly, the idea that someone would take the time to sit and do nothing more than pet his hair—it’s startling and comforting: Moira’s face swims before him, followed by a swell of grief that presses in on him from all sides. There had been a night, just the two of them, before David, when they’d laid out under the stars, his head in her lap, and she’d passed her fingers through his hair like this, like he was worth the time, worth the little things.  
  
“Charles.”  
  
But that’s wrong—that voice. Different, anyway. That voice is early mornings in a tent, conversations in the dark and under stress, but fondness and affection too. It’s bad clothes and sweat, maps and chess and passing the time, and friendship, maybe for the first time in his life.  
  
But Erik, in all the time they spent together while working to depose Shaw, never showed this kind of physical affection. He’d never acted like this until—  
  
Charles’ eyes snap open.  
  
Above him, Erik’s face swims into view. He isn’t looking at Charles, concentrating instead on the book in his hand. He’s seated to the side of the bed, one hand gripping a book while the other keeps up its incessant petting. Like this, it’s easy to think he has no motive beyond comfort—Charles’, apparently—and good literature: his mouth is quirked slightly to the right, and it twitches every so often, presumably when he finds a part of the book that he considers amusing. He’s the very picture of a man holding vigil at the bedside of a sick loved one.  
  
“I think you’d disagree with this,” he says, eyes still on the book.  
  
Thinking out loud? Not very like Erik. He’s never superfluous with his words—not in all the time Charles has known him. Yet, here he sits, carrying on a conversation with a man he thinks is unconscious.  
  
As politely as Charles can manage, he coughs lightly.  
  
The book lands on the bed with a thump, it’s pages shuttering together and losing Erik’s place. There’s no sign that Erik cares: the hand formerly holding the book remains outstretched for a few seconds after the book lands, and the hand in Charles’ hair stills, but in that time, his attention rockets to Charles, the book—and all else—utterly disregarded.  
  
“I didn’t think you’d wake so soon,” he says, clearing his throat. A good thing too—those words are choked and uncertain. “We were giving you something to keep you asleep. Nothing too strong, but I… thought you needed it.” His mouth twitches again, this time with uncertainty. “How long has it been since you’ve slept well? It looks like it’s been weeks. The circles under your eyes—“  
  
“I had things to do,” he replies stiffly, meeting Erik’s eyes and very deliberately shaking his head. Erik’s hand falls away, and he seems to have forgotten that he’d left it resting there at all, because he only just remembers to yank it upward before it meets with the bed. He regards it with a small frown, as though it’s the fault of his hand that he grew too comfortable and forgot that a conscious Charles Xavier will appreciate casual physical affection far less than a touch-starved, unconscious one.  
  
“Yes. Fighting me.”  
  
“Your letters made it quite clear what you wanted, Erik, and I wasn’t inclined to oblige you.”  
  
“I know.”  
  
Charles arches both eyebrows. “If you know, then why am I here?”  
  
Projecting a sincere earnestness that is frankly upsetting—a man who believes his own folly is ten times as frightening as a man who only tries to convince others of what he knows to be false—Erik leans in and places both his elbows on the bed, clasping his hands together and watching Charles. “If you want to have this conversation, Charles—“  
  
“The only conversation I want to have is one in which you tell me the whereabouts of my son.”  
  
“We haven’t been able to find your people yet,” Erik says simply. “We know their general location, but so many of my troops were needed here, to take the palace.” He stops and swallows down the frustration that had been rising in his voice. “It’s only a matter of a few days, Charles. The mansion is secure—I’ve increased the number of troops searching.”  
  
“You told me a day.”  
  
“ _You_ were the one who sent him away in the first place.”  
  
As a boy, his mother use to reprimand him when he raised his chin and looked down his nose at someone, but the action feels an appropriate reply for so ridiculous a comment. “I hardly _want_ you to find my people, Erik. I simply want to point out that you said a day, and that you failed.”  
  
Erik tilts his head slightly, clenching his jaw. “That’s vindictive of you. Not much like you at all, really. And I can’t believe you’d act on that sentiment.”  
  
Charles snorts and looks away. “I _was_ prepared to kill you, you know.” This—it isn’t easy to say—to admit. This isn’t him. It’s never been him. It’s only been him since he became desperate, since Erik _made_ him desperate, and if this is what Erik has been able to mold him into already, simply by sheer virtue of his attentions, what will happen in the days to come, through prolonged contact?  
  
He’s not as strong as he thought he was. The alternative—that strength so easily correlates with bitterness—is simply unthinkable.  
  
“You tipped your king.”  
  
A jolting change of subject, yes, but it’s a relevant point, and Erik ought to be commended for noticing. “You tore my region apart to get to me, Erik. You have held my people at swordpoint—have burned their homes and destroyed their livelihoods, because they stood between you and something you wanted. My wife is dead because of you. You have taken my life and played scorched earth with it, and I _know_ when I am beaten. I’m telling you now, for the sake of all others involved, you’ve _won_.”  
  
All he can think of in this moment is the snake charmer he read about in a book once: luring the snake closer, its movement and sway, courting danger. And here is Erik, leaning in, each word bringing him closer, as if he’d thought the syllables to be permission, and by the time the last word has tripped off Charles’ tongue, Erik is close enough for Charles to see his pupils dilate when he hears the declaration of surrender. The darkness of his pupils twitches, dancing with the light and Erik’s excitement before it finally settles, blocking out most of the color of Erik’s irises.  
  
“You’re still fighting me,” he murmurs, dropping his fingers until their pads run lightly over Charles’ right cheek, the pointer finger tracing delicately over Charles’ cheekbone while the others sweep behind, cataloging any overlooked patch of skin.  
  
“I didn’t intend to still be breathing,” he admits honestly.  
  
Erik’s fingertips press into his skin, pushing flesh against bone uncomfortably. “Are you going to try again?” he asks, his voice too even to be natural—too perfectly calm.  
  
“I’d say that depends.”  
  
The fingers against his cheek jerk and then flatten, stretching out and flexing, shaping to Charles’ cheek until Erik is cupping it lightly, his other hand wandering up to press lightly over Charles’ throat. There’s not quite a threat inherent in the movement, but it’s obvious that it’s meant to constrain him. He _does_ feel securely held, and if the situation were different, it might be comforting, or, at the very least, grounding. “On what?” Erik demands, tone so deceptively soft that even the air seems to leave the room, abandoning Charles to the fingers ringing his throat and the eventuality of emotional detonation.  
  
“If you find my son. I’d rather you didn’t, personally.”  
  
The fingers flex. “Are you bribing me to let your son go? Because he doesn’t _have_ anywhere to go. We’ll take the Upper North shortly. It’s no life for him. He’ll do best if he’s with you.”  
  
“I’m not bribing you for anything.” Not yet, anyway. He’ll play with what he has should alternate means of exiting the scene prove futile, but, until then, his best option is to let this ride out—to hope his son makes it away from here, away from everything Charles has brought down on his head just by existing.  
  
But if he has to stay, there’s very little he _wouldn’t_ do to ensure his son’s safety.  
  
Charles swallows against the hand on his throat, not because he needs to, but only to remind Erik that, what he’s choking? It’s no inanimate object. It’s human and real and alive, it’s flesh and blood, and it’s breakable.  
  
“I’m not bribing you,” he says again. “I’m telling you that the second I become convinced my son is safely away from you, I will end my own life. You may think you can stop me, but you’ll have to watch me every hour of every day, and even you, Erik, are far from being so greatly obsessed as to desire _that_.”  
  
Nails dig into the side of his neck. Seems his reminder was ignored. “Darling, if you leave me no choice, that’s what I’ll do.”  
  
“Mmm. And what a fine kingdom that will make. I’d say you best hope you find my son.” It’s immensely satisfying to tilt his head back on his pillow and smile up at Erik, lips tight and happiness the farthest thing from his mind. It doesn’t feel _right_ , but the satisfaction intrinsic in the movement seeps through his veins and sets his nerves alight. “If you find him—if—“ He stops, shuddering a little. The bedclothes don’t feel heavy enough anymore. “I will never leave my son to be raised by you. If I knew he’d be left with you if I—if—I would never take my own life if you were what he’d be left with.” Erik’s eyes flutter, and his flinch at those words is not nearly as subtle as he’d doubtless like it to be. “So.” Trying—trying so _hard_ just to say this, and have it _said_. “I’d say you better start praying that you find him unharmed.”  
  
“Are you trying to motivate me to find him?”  
  
“Motivate? Gods, no.” Never. Never, never, never, not when, even if he is still alive, his son will be near Erik, will be near all that he stands for and—Charles laughs, though it’s more of a wheeze. Doesn’t feel like he can breathe. “I’m doing my best to show you—do you understand?—how cruelly you’ve backed me into a corner. I want you to comprehend just what you’ve done, and what you’re destroying. I want you to know just how desperate you’ve made me, Erik. Does that please you? _Does_ it?”  
  
Inch by inch, Erik presses forward over him, bracketing him in under his arm. His head dips, and he nuzzles tenderly at Charles’ cheek. Sexuality is oddly absent from the movement, even when Erik’s fingers clench in the bed sheets on either side of Charles’ head. Keeping Erik’s hands visible out of the corner of his eye, Charles tolerates the nuzzling and does his best to keep breathing, though how he’s expected to do that when his lungs feel as though they’ve shrunk three sizes is beyond him.  
  
“Charles. I’ll give you everything,” he murmurs against Charles’ skin.  
  
Does Erik think he hasn’t heard that before? It’s the cliché of every situation mired in this nature. _I love you. I’ll give you everything. Except your freedom._ Nothing new under the sun and all that. Erik may as well be playing by a script.  
  
“Charming. And at what point did I give you the impression that I needed someone to take care of me?” Finally, he yanks a hand up and shoves Erik’s face away. Shock seems to be an effective tool: Erik falls back on his side, eyes heavy-lidded—Charles just barely refrains from shivering—and mouth gaping. “If I want something, I’ll damn well get it myself. I _never_ gave you any other impression—“  
  
Doing otherwise would have been madness and a colossal loss of self-control. Even back when they were simply Erik and Charles, working together to hunt Shaw, he had known what he could and couldn’t have. A bearer couldn’t inherit a kingdom, and he wasn’t about to pass up the chance to create a place where humans and mutants could co-exist. He’d wanted to rule—had known he could do it well—could truly change things. Offering Erik anything—it would have been unthinkable, and he’d known better.  
  
Only, the poleaxed expression on Erik’s face says otherwise. “You can’t be serious. You kissed—“  
  
Shock makes him jerk against the pillows. He hasn’t been slapped, but it certainly feels like it: the skin of his face is stiff and hot, and whether that’s a blush or a flush of anger—it could be either. Both. “You’re a _liar_.”  
  
The shock on Erik’s face is slowly giving way to concern. Anger would be more proper. Is this some twisted courting method? Does he think to play mind games with a telepath? No—Charles bites the inside of his cheek and looks away. Erik, for all of his less endearing qualities, would not be so stupid.  
  
What, then, is he after?  
  
“Charles,” Erik says slowly, leaning in. His hand comes to cup Charles’ right cheek, trying to coax Charles back into meeting his eyes. “Don’t you remember?”  
  
“I remember a good many things.” Though, clearly not whatever incident Erik is recalling. At the very least, Erik must have a very different recollection—so different as to keep the events from matching.  
  
“The night before we killed Shaw, Charles—that night in your tent. I kissed you, and—“  
  
What? No.  
  
Raw anger surges through Charles’ body, pushing the blood and heat to the surface and flooding it up his neck and into his face. He must be burning red. “Either you’re delusional, or you’re very cruel to try to make me believe—“  
  
Like a trap snapping shut, Erik’s free hand jerks up to Charles’ other cheek, smearing skin out of place with the pressure of his hand as he forces Charles to look at him. The time for gentle coaxing has ended, it seems. Not surprisingly, it didn’t last very long.  
  
“What did you do?” Erik asks, giving him a little shake. “Did you erase it? Gods, Charles, can you—can you even _do_ that to yourself?” His hands are shaking, and—he has the look of a man who’s struggling with desperation.  
  
Erasure. It’s… not out of the realm of possibilities. He—he _is_ a very powerful telepath, and if he’d felt it necessary….  
  
Erik shudders and drops his head, angling it down until Charles has a very good look at the top of his head. Then, slowly, Erik inches up the bed, jerkily pressing his head up under Charles’ chin. Too surprised to stop him, Charles tolerates the sudden infusion of warmth and the tickle of hair—the bump of Erik’s skull as it forces his chin up, holding him there against the well-cut and surprisingly soft locks of Erik’s hair. “Why _would_ you?” Erik hisses into the hollow of Charles’ throat as one of his hands grips Charles’ waist; the other supporting him as he hovers over Charles’ body. And, yes, there is the anger. But also… something sadder, more exposed and broken. “No wonder you wouldn’t—Charles, why would you do that to yourself? To _me_. No—you don’t—of course you don’t know. And of course it’s obvious. You must have known that if you believed you’d given me no indication of interest—that I only became interested after I found out what you were—“ He breaks off, pressing his cheek more firmly against Charles’s throat. “Charles, you are crueler to yourself than anyone will ever know.”  
  
That’s certainly true enough. Though, as much as that matters when he’s alone with his own thoughts and hurts, it’s irrelevant in the scheme of things. So many others have suffered much, much worse, and if Erik had left him alone, Charles had been on the way to helping those people. Humans. Mutants. He’d been a good ruler, had made life better for his people, and what does it matter, in light of that, that he couldn’t have what his body had designed him for? He was still a man—still quite capable of fathering children as well as bearing them, and he’d loved Moira. Any other… attractions that he may have felt—denying those urges was such a small thing, truly.  
  
“Is it true, Charles? Are you capable of erasing your own memory?”  
  
Charles hums noncommittally, tracing the feeling of the vibrations in his own throat as they echo out against Erik’s face, where it’s still pressed securely up under Charles’ chin. The angle could be better: being on his back in bed does not provide him with any sort of leverage to push Erik up and off of him, and it’s not as though Erik asked permission to stretch out over him in the first place.  
  
“Well?” Erik prompts, flicking a finger against Charles’ side, hard enough that Charles wiggles uncomfortably.  
  
“Never permanently. But I can wall things off.”  
  
Explaining the mind to a non-telepath would be akin to explaining color to someone born blind. Comparisons are the best route toward helping a person understand, but no number of metaphors of a house or a card catalogue or a storage building could possibly do the human mind justice. Erik will never comprehend the movement of memories and the sheer amount of energy and life in the human mind. Words, information—they’re exquisitely defined and tangible, if one knows where to look, and the mind is so beautifully full of them, and also of hidden places, of memories shelved for later, maybe forgotten, but waiting to be discovered. If he’s locked things away, it’s no different than any other person who has chosen to forget—only more effective, because he has greater precision.  
  
“Then you can find this memory again.”  
  
“I have little reason to do so. And even less reason to believe you when you say it exists.” A lie. The expression on Erik’s face moments ago was sufficient to indicate that Erik’s account is true.  
  
When it comes, the shift is so quick that Charles can’t catch it, and he’s smacked with the tail-end of it, when Erik jerks upward, darting out with a frankly terrifying precision to grip at Charles’ chin. His fingers easily find purchase on the jawbone, slotting into the dip there and pressing. He scatters bruises across the skin with the same disregard as a man in a parade scatters candy out over the sidewalks for the children.  
  
“I fully appreciate that you would have found it easier to conduct a war against me if you were under the impression that you had never acted on feelings for me that went beyond friendship. If you had felt the beginnings of a bond, you would have been fighting instinct as well as fighting _me_. Can’t fight a war on two fronts, hmm, _libeling_?” he mutters, finally drawing back and pressing his mouth to Charles’.  
  
This… isn’t how it’s supposed to go. None of this—pet names and promises; threats, both spoken and implicit; and maybe, the possibility that Erik could be right. Did he erase something? No time to consider at present, mores’ the pity.  
  
As kisses go, this one is chaste, and at first it’s difficult to feel alarmed. The fact that the movement feels familiar is likely a point to Erik, and quite possibly what he was hoping to prove by the action. Theories of muscles memory, especially in bond theory—Charles may be a monarch, but his first love is science, and, given how much time he’s spent on this topic, he’s well aware of what he’s feeling.  
  
Right. Maybe there is time to consider: tell himself the story. It’s all very removed, fact and fiction mixed together, and not really his life at all. Perfect. If he thinks this through, he won’t be ruled by base urges. A good play, yes? Make this all very neat and tidy.  
  
So, to begin: once… upon a time? Well, yes. A time he doesn’t know. Three hundred years, give or take. So, a time, yes, and it did only happen once. Though what _it_ was is difficult to say: some claim it was Shaw who brought about the end, and they may well have been right. He didn’t seem to age. But there had been a time before. Legend says the earth was reborn in fury of explosion and power—of light and fire. And then the storms followed, ravaging every bit of the earth.  
  
Ravaging. Not a good word. Not with lips pressing persistently at his, and—  
  
No. The story. And do not kiss back.  
  
There was a woman, it is said. A white-haired woman, who held back the storms—who could create those of her own. A woman, kept alive only by Shaw, and by those methods known only to him.  
  
Charles murmurs the question out against Erik’s mouth _—“Did you find her?”_ —but Erik doesn’t seem to hear the content of the garbled words; he pushes forward more intently, one hand creeping up to cradle Charles’ shoulder blade, cupping the bone in the palm of one large hand.  
  
Whatever it was Shaw had done, mutants grew stronger, and humans grew sick. But it mattered so little in a world where the very land was being torn from beneath their feet. And so the population dropped, mutant and human alike.  
  
The woman, whoever she was, was the real hero. Not Shaw. Never Shaw.  
  
They’d adored her. Their savior. And because they’d adored her, they’d adored Shaw too, for he was the one who kept her alive.  
  
Once upon a time, once upon a time: Charles squeezes his eyes more tightly shut.  
  
But though the woman had saved them, all was not well. There were still too few of them. The solution had been a decree, straight from the woman who kept them alive… and from the man who sustained her. She gave the world life, but she was nothing without him, and incapable of sustaining herself. Fragile. Vulnerable.  
  
And then had come the Change. As the mutants had once morphed, so mankind shifted further, compensating for its decreasing numbers. A handful of men began to be born different. Suddenly, childbearing was not the sole purview of women.  
  
And those who could bear—either gender—they were precious. So valuable as to need protecting.  
  
This was likewise with the woman and the man who gave her life. And as they did, so should the earth follow their example. Bearers were to be cared for, to be regarded as precious, and to submit to those better equipped to protect them—who would protect their greatest contribution of all: their children. So good was this declaration that nature too ceded to it: as had happened with the ability to bear children, humankind changed, this time enabling a bond. This was, of course, no burden: it only made certain that those who cared for the bearers—the guardians—would be linked to them.  
  
As it was then, so it remains today: bearer and guardian, united in one purpose, rebuilding the world into something better.  
  
It’s a very pretty story. Of course, when telling it to small children, no one mentions that it means bearers can’t inherit; that they’re under the control of their non-bearing relatives—whichever non-bearer acts as head of the household—until they’re married off—usually arranged—and given into the care of their spouse; and that, once married, they are essentially property, protected by law only in the sense that it’s forbidden to harm a bearer to the point where their ability to bear children, or, indeed, the children themselves, are in danger. Really bloody romantic, that. Such a lovely fairytale.  
  
Perhaps telling himself a story wasn’t such a good idea. Because all this?  
  
It’s the reasons he’s now on his back in bed with Erik.  
  
Erik, the same man who is now pressing lips against his, pressing forward, firm and coaxing all at once. His hands flex greedily at Charles’ waist, pressing and _asking_ , even when there’s no chance that he’ll take “no” for an answer. Charles knows it, can taste it on him, and he shutters his eyes, trying not to hate himself as he sinks against Erik, fighting—because he will _not_ be ruled by instinct, he is no base creature, damn it—not to open his mouth and offer access. The reason for what he is, for why his body is crying for him to simply lean back and let Erik climb astride him, to let him truly and irrevocably ruin everything—it’s only biology.  
  
This is disgusting, how he’s arching into Erik’s hands. That’s all. It’s good—so good, but—no. He has—he can handle this, yes? Stop it now. And he has to. Now. Before it goes further. The rasp of bed sheets against skin—he can fight that—knowing that the Change wasn’t widespread: a mere thirty percent of male babies are born with the Change currently, and if that was all it had been—if that were the only thing Charles were cursed with—well, he could handle it. No, not can, he _will_. If he can just get Erik off him, can stop nature—biology—gods, as much as Charles loves his science, it’s really terribly inconvenient right now. And telling himself statistics and history doesn’t seem to be working. His heart rate is rising—concentrate on counting it, would that help pull him out of this?—his body responding. Bloody Mother Nature and her crackpot idea that those capable of bearing children were vulnerable—that they would need a guarantee of protection. A bond.  
  
And now Erik has decided he needs to assault Charles’ mouth in order to get that bond. Hell, he already has part of it, if his accounts and the feeling in Charles’ own body are to be believed. Deleted memories or not, his body is screaming that something happened between them.  
  
Oh, gods, _stop._  
  
With one hard, sharp shove, Erik goes tumbling off him. Biology be hanged.  
  
Right. He can handle this, can store it away and push it—Erik—back, because he has to, because if he doesn’t, Erik is going to do worse than what he’s already done. The world is already a mess, and people have just laid down and let it happen, let people climb up between their legs and give it to them for no better reason than because they were born with the capability to bear children in a world where the population was dropping and children were desperately needed.  
  
Not him, though. He _can’t_ be one of those people.  
  
“That’s enough of that,” he snaps, planting his arms on the bed and levering himself up to face Erik. At some point, Erik must have stripped him and redressed him in what he’s wearing now: a plain white T-shirt, which, by the feel of it, is made of the cotton from the Southern Regions. Though, it’s not new, worn soft as it is, and the sense of comfort he feels at having it around him—now that he’s noticing it, it’s only another reason to curse the fledgling bond between them.  
  
This is Erik’s shirt. He’s dressed in Erik’s spared shirt… and it’s a _comfort._  
  
With each additional reason, it’s like a noose tightening. If he doesn’t find a way to leave, if he doesn’t break contact with Erik—  
  
Because, with every second ticked away, it’s becoming very obvious that maybe—and what it takes to _admit_ that—he can’t be as clearly objective as he’d like. He’s fighting himself.  
  
And he’s losing.  
  
He forces out a slow breath and deliberately meets Erik’s eyes with a hard glare. This is his own room, his own home, and what Erik has done, what he will do—Charles clenches his fingers into the bed. Mother nature doesn’t always know best—can’t know how Erik will tear the world apart. He already has done. Is it supposed to get better from here? It _won’t._  
  
And if this happens—if he can’t find a way out—he will at least not sleep with Erik in the same room where he slept with his wife.  
  
If he can help it, he will not sleep with Erik at all.  
  
“I’m wearing your clothes,” Charles notes blankly, nodding down at the soft cotton shirt and the gray cotton pants that are just peeking out from the blankets. He hadn’t noticed earlier when he sat up and the blankets slid down, but now he can’t manage to tear his eyes away.  
  
There’s an array of emotions battling on Erik’s face: irritation, most likely at being shoved aside, but a desire to please—ha, let biology torment him as well, the bloody sadistic thing that it is—and, yes, of course satisfaction, because no doubt the more primal part of his senses is so very happy to see Charles dressed in his clothes, enveloped in his scent. He’d very much like to mark his territory, no doubt. Actually, he _has_. It’s not as though there isn’t a whole wardrobe of Charles’ own clothing right here—it’s just Erik trying to wrap him up in his scent, to make this slide into a full-fledged bond easier.  
  
“Of course,” Erik says finally, his tongue darting out to wet his lip. He rolls over a bit, leaning his legs off the bed and holding his weight up with one arm. The pose looks casual, but there’s a hunger to his eyes, tracking any move Charles makes with barely suppressed intensity.  
  
Well, his self-control is commendable—to some degree, anyhow. Conquering the known world does not speak of particularly fine restraint.  
  
“I don’t consent to this, Erik. I suppressed that memory for good reason—“  
  
“Get it back.”  
  
Charles stills. “Excuse me?”  
  
Erik’s mouth twitches. “Get. It. Back. Bring back the memory.”  
  
Like hell he will. Whatever lapse of judgment possessed him to kiss Erik, or to let Erik kiss him that first time—the apparently existent first time that he doesn’t remember—it’s better that it stay suppressed. It will make smothering this bond all the easier.  
  
And it _will_ be smothered.  
  
“No,” he says simply.  
  
It wasn’t as though Charles _expected_ a good reaction, but, really, he could do without Erik’s temper: the hand under his throat, Erik’s pointer finger and thumb lodged under his jaw, pressing—just pressing—only enough to make him swallow, to threaten to choke, but not to tip over into the actual motion. He can feel the calluses on Erik’s fingers—sword calluses, and maybe even guns, though they’re rare—where they press into his skin.  
  
“It’s _over_ , Charles,” he bites out, each syllable crisp and more of a beating than if Erik actually took a whip to him—and today’s laws do not put that outside the realm of possibility. “ _Enough_.” Like a dog with a bone, he gives Charles a small shake. “I’ve been very lenient thus far, and you _know_ that.”  
  
In retrospect, lashing out and slapping Erik across the face is probably not the best idea. Goodness, though, the smack of flesh on flesh, the way Erik’s head snaps back, how he grunts, stunned—too stunned to do much when Charles heaves himself out of the bed—  
  
The door. Let it be unlocked, let it—yes, thank the gods— _run_ —  
  
He careens into the hall, barely clearing the doorframe in his haste. No guards. Good—he lunges forward, slipping on the carpet with only his socks for traction, but he catches himself on the opposite wall, fingers splaying over the wood paneling as he shoves off again, rallied by the sound of Erik pitching around the corner after him.  
  
Gods damn it all, this is _his_ house, and he knows it better than Erik, and he will not let a deluded tyrant who should know better—who suffered at the hands of Shaw so deeply that he should never have _become_ him—best him at this. If he can get round the corner and down the next hallway, there’s a room, and behind the bookshelf there’s a passage—if he can make it inside that room and lock the door—  
  
The air behind him shifts: a missed grab for his back.  
  
Desperate, he plucks a vase off its stanchion. Ghastly thing, that vase, but his mother, when she was sober enough to properly appreciate a piece of pottery, had liked it—though, her fondness for the horrid thing would have been more understandable if she _had_ been drunk when she picked it. Oh, well. This can be considered a tribute to her memory: he reels around, smashing it over Erik’s head just as Erik’s hand closes on the hem of his shirt. Just in time: the vase shatters over Erik’s brow in a violent array of ceramic shards, precisely as the hem of Charles’ shirt tears—a sick ripping sound of shredded thread—and a hoarse grunt signals that the blow hit true—though it does little more than make Erik stumble, tumbling over against the wall in a mess of criss-crossed steps and an unsure hand smacking the molding as he tries to catch himself.  
  
Charles sprints.  
  
Most of him knows he’ll never make it. But it’s been _days_ , and Erik hasn’t found David, and that’s hope—enough to make him try. If he can get clear of this place before Erik finds his son—if _he_ can find his son—there’s every possibility that he and David could make it far from here, a tiny little cottage in the woods somewhere, up past the Upper North, where Erik will never find them, where even biology will forget all about them, and Charles can finally have some peace.  
  
As if peace were ever an option.  
  
 _It’s not_ , says the hand that digs down into his shoulder just as he goes to round the corner of the hallway. _You fool_ says the fist that slams across his face once the hand has yanked him back around to face Erik. _This is life now_ , he’s informed by the carpet as the blow sends him spinning, socked feet sliding out from under him and smashing him down to the floor where he splays out on his chest on the carpet, silent tears gathering in his eyes. It’s not the punch—it stings, but Erik pulled the blow quite a lot. No, it’s—gods, this can’t be it, it can’t end this way, with him on the floor, and Erik here, ready to take over every aspect of his life and make it like this, where he’s helpless, and nothing, really—nothing at all.  
  
This is what it’s like to feel small, isn’t it? So terribly insignificant to the world at large. To himself. To anyone.  
  
And, really, he’s scared.  
  
He doesn’t realize he’s swearing until a hand materializes on the back of his neck, forcing his face down into the carpet. “Stop asking the gods, Charles,” Erik snarls from above him. “You want mercy, you’d do well to beg _me_.”  
  
As if he would. He’ll take whatever Erik wants to hand out before he sinks that low.  
  
“Fuck. You.” It has less effect when spit out into the carpet. He probably sounds downright pathetic, his nose blocked from trying not to cry and his voice scratchy and broken from panic and desperation.  
  
“I think not. _You_ were the one made for that, Charles.”  
  
Not likely. Nature got it wrong. Had to have. Moira gave him the most beautiful baby ever, and they could have had more. He loved her, he _did_ , no matter what sort of biological call he feels when Erik yanks him over onto his back by his right arm. The bastard apparently hasn’t considered that the limb is _attached_ , or, if he has, by this point he just doesn’t care. Before Charles can settle from that, though, Erik is kneeling down before him, pulling him none-too-gently to the side as he sets himself back against the wall, and, knees pulled up to make a sort of cage, seats Charles in his lap.  
  
Being manhandled is downright insulting. He’s not a _doll_. And so he struggles—of course he does—but his nails are short and clipped, and in the time it takes for Erik to pin his hands down, both wrists clasped in one of Erik’s hands, he doesn’t manage much damage. A few scratches to Erik’s arms, perhaps, but the man has just finished a war—he’s had much worse. But if that won’t work—he tries to twist and take a bite out of Erik’s neck, but Erik evades him there too, his free hand darting up to clasp Charles tight around the throat.  
  
Again? Really?  
  
Fine. Let Erik choke him. Death wouldn’t be the worst that could happen at this point. He was ready to do it himself, spare Erik the trouble. Really, this is nothing, nothing so bad as the hot, panted breath against his hair, the heat of Erik at his back, and—and—is Erik _rocking_ him?  
  
Yes, he is. The motion is small but smooth, titling forward and back, and absolutely nothing like Charles’ mother ever did for him. That would have required contact and perhaps some affection, both of which Erik seems to have some understanding of, because, as unbelievable as it seems, his current actions are a textbook example of how to gentle a distraught bondmate. Physical contact, repetitive rocking motion—Erik has been doing his research. It _is_ soothing, though—it can’t help but be, despite Charles’ best wishes and regardless of how he keeps twisting and wiggling, kicking out and swearing nastily when Erik gets one leg up and over Charles’ lower limbs, pinning him with a definite finality.  
  
The rocking keeps up, even through Charles’ curses and swears, his threats and his choked breathing, even his pleas. It’s more than a little mortifying to feel the wet heat of tears leaving tracks down his skin, but Erik only continues with the tender, swaying motion, leaving Charles to his struggles until, finally, his limbs can’t keep up the fight, and sheer exhaustion corrals him into an exhausted slump where the only option for defiance that he has left is to go still, as tense as he can manage, choking down sobs so violently that gorge rises in his throat. Better to vomit than cry. He isn’t weak. Letting Erik see that he might be—it’s like tossing a dog a steak and hoping it won’t notice where it came from.  
  
Once Charles has quieted to the point where Erik apparently judges that he’s capable of taking in information, Erik rests his cheek against Charles’ hair and sighs, his breath wispy and strangely thoughtful. “Either you retrieve that memory yourself, Charles, or I’ll see to it that it’s done. You know the bond will let me do that. Don’t make it come to that, please.”  
  
After they bond, implying once Erik is capable of holding Charles’ telepathy in check. Or—is he already capable of it? Please, no. And is a statement like that supposed to be soothing? Erik must have missed that lesson in his studies: _I’m going to force you into a bond against your will, whether or not you let yourself access a memory that might allow you to remember that you helped spark this connection._ Erik always has seen stark truth as something resembling a lullaby—or possibly a narcotic. Best to kill frivolous hope before it starts and instead keep expectations reasonable: it’s a hell of a way to comfort someone—it may just _be_ Hell—but it’s the way Erik knows best.  
  
“What twisted line of logic would lead you to believe a bond between us is a good idea?” Charles snaps, shoving his chin down hard and trying to stab himself with the fingers at his neck—if he manages, there’s at least some small hope that Erik will release him. But… no such luck. “You’ve just conquered what’s left of civilization, and given the mess you’ve made, you’ll be doing some serious politicking with the regions you’ve subjugated. Just because Genosha was always the unofficial regional head doesn’t mean there isn’t going to be a good deal of work needed now that it’s _officially_ the head of government. I’d say you have your hands full without also having to worry about me killing you in your sleep.”  
  
Erik snorts. “Really, Charles? In my _sleep_?”  
  
Of all the slights Erik can give him, refusing to take him seriously is high on the list. “I’ll be a rallying point for every disaffected citizen. You _know_ that.”  
  
“Only from your own region,” Erik replies easily, loosening his hold on Charles’ throat long enough to clap him smartly on the cheek. It’s fond, in Erik’s own way. “And, even then, not on a widespread scale. While people there were remarkably tolerant of your efforts to integrate humans on the same level as mutants, you made a large tactical mistake in thinking that marrying a human wouldn’t cause a backlash in your diplomatic relations. Given time, you might have been able to smooth things over, but you certainly earned yourself no friends when you married Moira—and you made things worse by foregoing a bond.” He pauses, nuzzling the side of Charles’ face. He must not have had the chance to shave this morning: the stubble rasps against Charles’ skin, catching at it like a kiss. “Were you even capable of it? Having initiated a bond with me before you turned tail and ran, _could_ you have managed a bond with Moira?”  
  
Immediately, Charles opens his mouth to snap back a quick reply, but….  
  
The thing is, he’s not quite sure. He’d refused to bond with Moira because he didn’t want that kind of power over his wife, right? That’s what he’s always told himself and that—it’s not even a lie. Mutant to mutant, he wouldn’t have had a choice: the bond would have sparked regardless, but, because she was human, he’d have had to initiate the bond—and he’d wanted her to have her freedom. True as it is, though, it might also be a convenient cover-up for something that his body knew but that he’d wiped from his own mind: if, indeed, he accidentally brought to life the beginnings of a mating bond with Erik, bonding with Moira might truly have been impossible.  
  
Just thinking about it—cold uncertainty drills into his gut, spreading out to his limbs and turning them leaden.  
  
His lack of answer appears to be sufficient for Erik’s tastes: he laughs a little against the side of Charles’ head, laying a kiss nearby on his temple. Even his lips are warm, and the longer Charles goes without struggling, the more the tension in Erik’s muscles eases, morphing into something languid and increasingly warm-intentioned. He still maintains a firm grip, but he’s easier about it, fonder.   
  
“No one is coming to your aid, Charles,” he says, and, despite his words, his tone is kind, though as insinuating as his fingers as they creep up under Charles’ shirt, exploring the meat between his ribs and his hips, so intimately that it’s a wonder Erik doesn’t make the organs dance to his touch from sheer will alone.  
  
“Even many of your own people were unsure about Moira,” Erik continues—both verbally and physically: the palms of his hands press in, riding over skin and up, up to Charles’s chest, where he hooks his fingers over Charles’s collarbones and holds on. “Some outright opposed your decision. Lovely banners they made, by the way—and your speech addressing their concerns was very nice. But, really, Charles, when people find out you’ve been a bearer all along—” He stops, dropping another kiss to Charles’ temple, fingers of his right hand darting from Charles’ collarbone to his throat when Charles tries to pull away, “that’ll be the end of things.”  
  
This is what it feels like when the world slows down to hinge on one moment, isn’t it? This kind of trapped panic, this helpless floundering.  
  
“You swore—you _swore_ —“ he chokes out, lashing out before he thinks better of it. A quick squeeze freezes him up before he gets very far. Damn it, if Erik is going to choke him, why won’t he simply do it properly and stop this threatening mid-way nonsense?  
  
“I haven’t told anyone anything. Nor will I. I told you before, Charles, though I’m assuming that your lack of questioning means you didn’t believe me: you had a traitor in your ranks. And someone funneling information out is just as useful at funneling information in. Start a rumor, and when we marry, and then when you begin to show—“ The hand at Charles’ throat finally lets go, but the direction it takes—down to Charles’ stomach, where it rests, pushing lightly—is no more welcome, “—it will be confirmed for anyone who cares to look.”  
  
How cruel. How utterly, utterly cruel. Damn it all, really, all of it: he can’t breathe but for the anger, and it shouldn’t be possible to feel like this, should it? Like he’s burning alive with helplessness and shame, like he could lash out, but it would mean nothing. And Erik did this. His friend. A trusted friend.  
  
 _How did I miss that he was capable of this?_  
  
“Or,” Erik drawls, giving Charles’ stomach a careful pat, “you could make an announcement. Though, if that displeases you so much, you could always ask _me_ to make one.”  
  
An announcement? As though this is something of which to be _proud_?  
  
Has he lost his mind?  
  
“Erik,” he says slowly, tasting out every word, “I really think that I might hate you.” Conversational. Light. And really fantastically brutal. Maybe true. But likely not, which is what aches the most about all this. “And if you think I will _ask_ you for anything, I’d thank you kindly to get your head out of your ass and _think_.” _Especially_ brutal, come to think of it: Charles isn’t given to crudeness, but when the situation calls for it….  
  
Unkind enough, anyway, that Erik jerks back. Well, good. Is he finally comprehending just what pushing like this means? That he can’t just _do_ this and expect no backlash? A bit late: Erik’s plan is a perfect, brilliant plan, if one leaves out the human element—the factor of a thinking, feeling person on the other end of the deal, and one who in no way appreciates being forced into this position.  
  
“What?” he presses on, deliberately leaning back into Erik, saddling him with the extra weight. “You think it wouldn’t happen? Did you really think that I’d eventually settle down, give you a few children, end up happy being stripped of everything I was ever supposed to be? Do you really think you’re _that_ fantastic a lay, Erik? That you could fuck the resistance right out of me, even if I were opposed to going to bed with you in the first place?” Erik’s very still now: Charles wiggles his shoulders, just to see if there’s a reaction. Nothing. Interesting. “Too honest for you? Don’t like to call it what it is? It’s rape, Erik. Forced marriage. And I won’t love you for it. I won’t respect you for _any_ of it. You’re going to force a bond, I know, but I won’t cooperate.”  
  
When Erik’s reply finally comes, it’s nothing like what Charles expects: “Charles,” he says slowly, and, though there’s a tremble in his voice, it’s hidden miles beneath the forced placidity that holds the syllables together, “Have I made you think I wish you harm?”  
  
This is a conversation better suited to a good deal of alcohol and a long table via which he and Erik could put some distance between them. It most definitely shouldn’t be had with him seated in Erik’s lap, held like something pretty and fine and the antithesis of everything he wants Erik to see him as right in this moment.  
  
Like everything he’s supposed to be from now on.  
  
Caught. Trapped. Owned.  
  
 _Have I really become that?_ His mouth feels dry, and he can’t put the thought to words. _No. Not yet._  
  
The feel of Erik’s chest rising with a larger than normal breath reminds him he hasn’t answered. Though, what to say?  
  
The truth, perhaps, since it’s likely the most surprising thing he can offer.  
  
“Wish me harm? Certainly not,” he admits, “But I’m sure you haven’t considered what _I_ wish very much at all. And, by overlooking that, you _are_ doing me harm.”  
  
Erik’s cheek presses a little more firmly against Charles’ hair; Charles tosses his head, but Erik won’t let himself be shaken off. The uncertainty of his previous question is gone, swept aside by the answer received.  
  
A lie may have been the better option.  
  
“It’s charming, Charles,” he says with renewed bravado, “that you’d like to buck societal convention and operate under the assumption that both evolution and everyone else in the world is wrong while you are right, but it’s not reality. You think I’m doing you harm, but biology thinks that I’m doing right by you. Biology, religion, societal convention.” He breathes in deeply, expanding his chest out to meet Charles’ back, and if he holds the breath too long for it to be normal, it’s not exactly surprising. “I will, of course, listen to whatever you have to say—and I do understand that a lifetime of deeply ingrained bad habits will not be easy for you to break—but if you take a look at the world around you, it should be obvious that, whatever else you wish were the case, both circumstances and nature call for you to lead a different life than you’ve been living.”  
  
Charles turns his chin to peer over his shoulder at Erik as best he can, though he’s only treated to a partial profile, and mostly just the skin of Erik’s jaw line. “Oh? If you’re so concerned about the population, Erik, perhaps we should discuss the causalities of the war you waged in order to consolidate control of the regions.”  
  
Clearly, he’s hit a sore spot: Erik stiffens behind him. Logical arguments are all well and good—they’re rather Charles’ forte, actually—but double standards do tend to be terribly tricky when trying to reason things out. Nice of that rule to be at Erik’s expense this time around. Not much else is currently siding with Charles, after all.  
  
But Erik’s answer is not what he expects: “How much of that day do you remember?”  
  
He doesn’t need to ask to which day Erik is referring: it will be scarred in both their minds until the day they die. “Why are you asking if you think you know?”  
  
“Because I _don’t_. I think you’ve erased part of it—you’re acting like you’ve erased parts of it—but I’m not sure how much.”  
  
“And you expect me to know what I erased? That rather defeats the purpose of erasing it in the first place.” He pauses then, turning his face back to stare at the opposite side of the hallway. “You may not _know_ what I erased—but you’ve formed an idea of what you _think_ I’ve erased.”  
  
Erik nods against the side of his head.  
  
“Well? What do you think I removed, Erik?”  
  
The answer doesn’t come quickly, and, in the interim, Erik shifts uncomfortably against Charles’ back, dropping both hands to settle securely over Charles’ stomach, still holding him in place, though, Charles imagines, to the outside observer it might look like a simple embrace. “Everything important,” Erik admits finally, his voice too hoarse for him to pretend his suspicion leaves him unaffected.  
  
“I don’t want the memories back.”  
  
“It will make a difference in how you feel about this, Charles. And it would explain quite a few things to you.”  
  
“I highly doubt it would alter how I intend to approach this situation.”  
  
“I didn’t say it would change your decision. But it _would_ change how you view this. How you view _me_.”  
  
Oh—and that right there—that’s something. Charles hadn’t—he hadn’t seen, but he should have. How did he miss _this?_ Yes, he’d known that Erik truly doesn’t understand why Charles might think he’s being cruel, but this is… more. There’s something in those lost memories that Erik clearly thinks would prove that’s not what he intends. Explaining away potential rape and coercion—he thinks those memories would do exactly that.  
  
Those must be some profoundly efficacious memories.  
  
The creeping unease that assaulted Charles’ stomach earlier comes back in full force, slithering up his spin and stabbing icicles of doubt into the base of his neck. The throb there, comprised of tightened muscles, is a sufficient enough explanation for what feels like the touch of winter.  
  
What _has_ he deleted?  
  
Footsteps echoing up the corridor—the place where Erik tackled him is so close to the bend of the hallway, and, truly, that’s taunting—forestalls any potential answer. Erik’s hands tighten—not painfully, but with what seems to be anticipation strong enough that it shifts his attention off Charles for the time being and refocuses it on the man who turns the corner.  
  
To the man’s credit, he startles very little when he finds his ruler seated on the floor with an obviously agitated man in his lap. Charles fights the urge to grimace: Erik will have informed his army about Charles’ existence and Erik’s eventual intentions for him, no doubt. He can’t even truly ignore that fact, considering Erik’s soldier hasn’t even the courtesy to pretend he isn’t interested. If anything it’s the opposite: he eyes Charles speculatively, snorting softly to himself and rolling his eyes, apparently perceiving himself above the whole spectacle.  
  
Best get used to this sort of gawking—and, at that thought, it takes a concentrated effort to ignore the sinking feeling in his chest. If Erik has his way, this will be life from here on out. People will stare to their hearts’ content, many far more blatant in their interest than this man.  
  
“My Lord,” the man says, just this side of lax, giving Erik a sloppy—and very nearly sardonic—salute. Gods only know how Erik hasn’t gutted this man yet: he doesn’t exactly scream respect. The general cavalier air that hangs about him makes it frankly surprising that he’s even willing to work with Erik in the first place.  
  
More surprising than the man’s actions, though, are Erik’s reactions. This is _Erik_ , who, in the time Charles has known him, is precise and neat in all he does. Like the edge of a blade—sharp, unyielding, and efficient. Yet, the way he regards the man now—with a mixture of amusement; exasperation; and, yes, a hint of distaste; combined with a dash of obvious confidence in the man before him—speaks of at least some degree of respect and familiarity. For Erik to tolerate this kind of laxity in one of his soldiers would require extenuating circumstances and reasons that Charles cannot begin to guess at.  
  
“Logan,” Erik acknowledges, not unkindly. “News?”  
  
Completely against Charles’ expectations, the man drops his salute and leans back against the wall, tossing his arms haphazardly in a fold across his chest. “We got what you asked for. Left it back with John. Poor kid’s near about wetting himself trying to figure out what to do. Awful lot of crying going on there.” He smirks. “More on John’s side, I’d bet.””  
  
A rumbling laugh vibrates through Erik’s chest, and Charles knocks his back against the source of it. It’s bad enough that he’s been pulled into Erik’s lap in the first place, but to simply sit here while Erik holds a conversation—that’s beyond his limits.  
  
As if any of those limits have been respected as of late. Laughable, really.  
  
“Tell John to bring him up to my location,” Erik says, though the light tap of his fingers against Charles’ waist at least acknowledges that he understands his captive’s discomfort. “And good work.”  
  
Logan, as Erik calls him, huffs out a half-hearted laugh. “Oh, yeah, sure. Real important mission and all that, I know.” His eyes stray from Erik and down to Charles again. While Erik’s expression isn’t visible, Charles can feel Erik’s facial muscles shift against his cheek, and he would guess this Logan is receiving something resembling a scowl. Grown men have surrendered from that scowl alone—Charles would know; he was there—but Logan just chuckles at the sight of it, appearing to be _pleased_ —is he suicidal?—that he’s gotten a rise out of Erik. Better yet, the gleam in his eyes when he opens his mouth indicates that he’s going to try to push further on that: “Bet I can guess why.”  
  
Charles could swear that the temperature drops in the hallway by at least several degrees. “That will be all, Logan.”  
  
God only knows how Erik manages to dismiss him. Logan has already proven his temperament doesn’t naturally incline him to fall into line—nor does he have the appearance of a man so easily given orders: he’s not particularly tall, but he more than makes up for it in sheer mass. The man has muscles on his muscles, for goodness sake, which his coarse tunic and military issue pants do little to disguise. And shoulders that broad—Charles cannot imagine Logan has lost many fights in his time. Even the cut of his hair—sculpted oddly on his head, almost like two fins, but curled—which would be absurd on anyone else, suits him. Ridiculously thick sideburns or not, physically he doesn’t seem to be a man with which to be trifled.  
  
Yet, here is Erik, giving him orders. And Logan is following them. Bizarre.  
  
“Yeah,” Logan chuffs, already turning to head back down the hall. “I’d hate to interrupt something.”  
  
Would he? Well, that makes one of them. Would Erik lash out if Charles tried to call Logan back? He’s on the brink of trying, merely to see, but the chance of being ignored silences him and crumples the words up in his chest. Better never to ask than to ask and be refused help. At this point, he’s not sure he could endure that.  
  
As quickly as he came, the man strolls off casually with disregard more suited to a jaunt through town than a walk through a captured enemy residence. Erik, in contrast, seems unsettlingly pleased, not only to have received the information the man brought, but also to see his retreating back: his smile against Charles’ temple—noticeable from the pull of skin, the rasp of lips over his hairline—even _feels_ smug.  
  
“Someone bring you more spoils?” Charles asks acerbically. “Will I have to wait in line?”  
  
Whereas Erik’s back was warm and supporting just a moment before, when those words drop between them, his hands close over Charles’ shoulders and give an angry, hard shove upward, sending Charles not-quite-sprawling, but more stumbling up onto his knees. Erik is close behind him, hands still on his shoulders, steadying Charles even in the midst of temper, as he yanks upward yet again, climbing to his feet and manhandling Charles up with him.  
  
Charles gains his feet, tottering unsteadily, and balking at the sensation of Erik’s fingers curving to his hips and fitting themselves there in secure precision. Logically, those fingers can’t possibly be giving off enough heat to be felt through layers of clothes, but the press of each individual digit resisters in his mind as scalding. A nerve dysfunction? Perhaps. Though, more likely, his emotional capacity has been pushed to its limit and is now reacting in a physically negative fashion to what it perceives as the cause of its problems: Erik, and, by extension, Erik’s touch.  
  
Not so unreasonable, all things considered.  
  
“Don’t be absurd, Charles,” Erik finally answers once they’re both on their feet. “After all the trouble I’ve gone through to get you back, do you really think I’d be so dismissive of the sacrifices both me and my men have made? So dismissive as to turn my attentions to someone else? Do you truly think I’d be so dismissive of _you_?”  
  
Erik gives him a light shove, and Charles stumbles forward a few steps, the toe of one socked foot catching on the other, and, if not for Erik’s hand under his elbow, he might have tripped.  
  
“You’ve been rather dismissive of my opinion so far, if you recall,” he points out.  
  
The noise that wells up in Erik’s throat is alarming, to say the least. Rabid creatures have a more pleasant cadence than _that_. As quickly as it comes, however, Erik strangles it down in his own throat and swallows it away. Charles cannot imagine what look he’s wearing on his own face, but it must be distinctly unpleasant to have motivated Erik to check himself like that. And, indeed, Erik has gone still, suddenly appearing very nearly contrite. He draws backward, his hands held out to his sides with the palms up unthreateningly.  
  
“This wasn’t how I wanted this to go, you know,” he admits. “I… didn’t anticipate that you might have selectively edited your own memories.” His face contorts, thinning his cheeks and bowing his brow. “Charles, if you would let yourself access those memories, so much would be explained—“  
  
“I locked them for a reason.”  
  
Erik frowns—even during their time as friends, he never did handle being denied very well—but he keeps his distance. “I can’t let you do that.” Pausing, he wets his lips with his tongue, as if in preparation for speaking, but, when he opens his mouth, the words stall and all that comes out is a shock of breath that whistles between his teeth and slips away, wordless. He licks his lips again. “Charles—“ As if the name is a prayer, a plea—some sort of invocation. The moment passes quickly, though, and Erik reels back in his self-control, visibly taking in a deep breath and raising his open palms just a little higher. “Charles,” he tries again, succeeding in sounding passably authoritative this time, “Why do you think you aren’t able to access my mind?”  
  
Charles’ breath catches.  
  
It’s a fair question. He’d assumed that Erik had received some sort of telepathy-blocking implant. They aren’t so uncommon with nobility these days. The price of the surgery, the lack of proper facilities—all of that combines to make the implants impossible for most to afford or obtain, but a man like Erik would have had access, and it had been simple to assume that Erik had used his position in order to receive one.  
  
What other alternatives are there? There are… very few. Only one, really. And it’s not one that he’s prepared to consider. Not unless he absolutely has to.  
  
“An implant?” Erik prompts. It rankles that he’s capable of putting a voice to Charles’ fears. “Very rare, yes? And, thankfully, not what’s allowing me to block you.”  
  
Breathing in through his nose in an attempt to center himself, Charles takes a step back. Inconveniently, this presses him up against the wood of the wall, and, Erik, seeing an opportunity, sidles closer. He seems to be taking care not to box Charles in unnecessarily—some desire to show trust, perhaps?—but his advance is unyielding, and Charles finds himself bracketed, though not held down. Yet.   
  
“You should know better than most what the beginnings of a bond look like, Charles,” he says with something approaching gentleness.  
  
As attempts go, this one is an admirable effort to break unkind news in a respectful, soft manner. And it’s an utter failure: Charles stomach clamps down on itself and his breathing grinds to a halt. His mind and vision reel, swimming, and he staggers, shooting his hands out backwards to the wall in order to grab on and steady himself.  
  
Something about that suggestion—it resonates. It shouldn’t—forming a bond isn’t something he could have overlooked—but it _does._  
  
“No. You’re wrong.”  
  
“I’m not, Charles. Those memories would explain that. It’s impossible even for a telepath to sever a bond, which you obviously knew, and I can only assume that you thought the next best thing would be if you had no knowledge of the bond.” His brow smoothes, face softening in sympathy. “I do wonder, though, if you refrained from trying to bond with Moira because you’d programmed your mind to avoid that attempt for fear of what it would tell you, or because you truly believed it was cruel to bind another person to yourself.”  
  
The latter. It would have to be. The discomfort with the bonding process is woven into his memories with too much complication for it to be anything else. He can plant memories, but it would have taken him ages—an unthinkable amount of time—to go through his entire memory and add in the kind of small touches that he has: the unsettled feelings in his childhood when he saw a dominant partner draw his mate’s powers to use for himself in a way she clearly did not approve of; the fear at potentially making a mistake that would alter his own wife’s life, and which could not be corrected, because all decisions lay with him; and most of all, seeing what Shaw had done, creating what amounts to an entire religion out of evolution. So many other things too, woven into him in small places—the decision not to bond with his wife would have always been there, and any knowledge of what he’d already done with Erik would only have given it a base.  
  
“I know, Charles, that you don’t want me to be able to use your telepathy—“  
  
“And you wonder _why_ that is?”  
  
“—but we’ve become this way for a reason. Guardians developed the ability to draw their bearer’s best talents in order to use them to protect their bearer, and while I know you don’t see it now—“ He moves forward again, slowly—achingly slowly—his eyes searching Charles’ face presumably for any fear as he raises his hand and slips it upward to finally brush the tips of his fingers over Charles’ cheek. When he meets no resistance— _move, move_ Charles’ mind screams, but his body is still too caught in the sheer horror of what he’s being told—he slides them backward toward Charles’ hair, laying his fingers flat against Charles’ cheek; and, eventually, the palm of his hand comes too, rising to cup Charles’ face. “I know you don’t see it now,” he murmurs, “but I _am_ trying to protect you, Charles. And it’s not what you think: I won’t ask you to sit alone in an ivory tower like a useless plaything.” It’s almost impossible to follow his words, so concentrated is he on the fervor in Erik’s eyes. “I’d be a fool not to let you use your talents. You’re—“ He stops, laughing a little. “Gods, Charles, you’re so talented, and we can work together, make things better for everyone. It’s yours if you want it, Love: this kingdom, the chance to have influence in ways so much greater than what you had in Westchester.”  
  
So terrifying to _think_ —to suppose that he could have that, all that unchecked power, and Erik truly doesn’t see it. “No,” he chokes out, hands still clinging to the wall, his movements forestalled by his own inability to tear himself away from staring at the unnaturally bright belief in Erik’s eyes, and the earnestness of his expression. “I—Erik, that’s what I’ve always _feared_. With my mind, I could make anyone do anything, and if I—“ He bites off the words, gulping down air. It doesn’t go in right: his lungs squeeze shut, but he has to say this, to somehow make Erik understand— “If I ever let myself, I could become something terrible. And I don’t want it—that kind of power. No one should have that power. It’s not even about a moral stance that says people should be able to make their own choices. It’s about the reality that, if someone had that kind of power, one wrong decision—it would ruin so many lives. And even if my intentions were good, if I lost sight of things—if I were wrong, even if I were convinced I was right—everyone would suffer the consequences of that. It could begin for such good reasons, but I’m not equipped for that kind of influence, Erik—no one is. It would be so tempting to push just a little further, cross a few more lines— _I don’t want it_ , Erik, do you understand?”  
  
“You’re afraid of yourself.”  
  
Charles shivers: all his words, and Erik sums them up in one simple sentence.  
  
“Don’t bother to tell me that you can help with that,” he presses on, because Erik needs to understand, “that you won’t let me become something like that. Just because you have the power to stop me doesn’t mean you won’t use what you leech from me to do terrible things yourself. You’re no moral authority—I wouldn’t trust you to stop me from becoming something terrible any more than I trust you not to use any bond between us for your own gain.”  
  
Erik’s fingers flex against Charles’ cheek. “Then you admit there _is_ a bond.”  
  
Everything comes flooding back in a rush of movement and clarity, and Charles is slapping Erik’s hand away even before things have settled and the world has shifted back into focus. “There will be no union between us. This conversation is over.”  
  
Erik lets his hand fall, though when it comes to rest at his side, he clenches his fingers into a ball for a few moments before letting his hand fall open again. “I’ll take you back to your room.”  
  
What? Can it really be that simple? All along, was this all he needed to say? Erik—he never gives in… and— _oh_.  
  
He’s not giving in now, either. This is regrouping, nothing more. An end to this conversation, yes, but only because they’re going in circles, and Erik isn’t one for talking anyway. He’s made an effort for Charles, rather than simply falling back into old patterns of action, but this conversation is making no progress, and, for Erik, that’s an invitation to say he’s tried and to move on—to do things his way now.  
  
Somehow, Charles can’t shake the feeling that he’s failed: that this was his one and only chance at reasoning, that Erik had made the effort only for him, but that he’ll now believe he’s dispensed his duty to Charles in that respect.  
  
So often now, it’s one mistake on top of another—like he’s building an entire life out of mistakes, and, as Erik reaches out to grip his elbow and lead him forward down the hall and back to his room, the knowledge begins to solidify: he can’t begin to determine which actions were wrong and which were right. He could be making mistakes now, and he won’t know until later, until hindsight offers him a better perspective.  
  
He’s floundering, and the only person who wants to pull him out of the water and help him is the very person who’s poised to bring his life crashing down around him.  
  
At this point, it might be prudent to simply let himself drown.


	4. Chapter 4

Erik does not, understandably, leave him to his own devices—no sane man would after he’d watched Charles try to kill himself twice in one afternoon. Until David is found or Charles manages an escape, there’s no question that this will be the order of life.  
  
That hadn’t eased the bite of Erik’s disappointed countenance staring down at him as he’d seated Charles at the desk and called up metal to bind his feet and one of his wrists to the chair. In order to ensure no damage, Erik had taken care to wrap the metal over a trouser leg or, in the case of Charles’ wrist, a swath of fabric that used to be part of a blanket before Erik carelessly tore it for his own purposes. The method of binding is undeniably lacking in malevolence, but Charles still hadn’t bothered to stop scowling throughout the whole process, even when Erik told him he was leaving him one hand free to allow Charles to reach for things on the desk—several books are scattered there, along with paper, a pen, Erik’s letters, a few maps, and various other odds and ends that Charles had left out in last night’s planning session. It’s an adequate diversion meant to pass what Erik had assured him will not be a particularly extended period of time.  
  
Erik had then ignored Charles’ vitriolic remarks, dropped a kiss on his forehead, and told him to take some time to think over the situation and the merits of voluntarily accessing those memories.  
  
Like hell he’ll do that. And now, two hours after Erik left, he’s more convinced than ever that reliving those memories would be a mistake.  
  
There _is_ a bond between him and Erik—or at least a fledgling one. He has to admit the truth in that, and, in the last few minutes, he’s managed to do so—grudgingly, hatefully, but also inevitably. He’s never encountered another bonded telepath, but, like any other noble, he’s received a solid education that included mating theory: when two compatible mutants meet, they’re drawn to each other, and, should they begin to engage in intimacy, the chemicals in the body can trigger and start the bonding process. For lack of a better word, it’s an imprint—rather like a biological betrothal, only far more binding. In a world where population is a very valid concern, biology seems to have decided that mankind needed to evolve to the point where, once an imprint is made, there’s no going back on the deal.  
  
And nature, sadistic thing that it is, can never make it so simple as that: it’s the argument of many a mutant that even biology has favored their kind. Bonds are more difficult to cement between pure humans, giving rise to the likely correct theory that it’s evolution’s way of ensuring that the mutation breeds true. Bonds between human—their creation is more intentional, the sort of thing that only occurs from repeated sex and an active straining of the mind to make the link. With a mutant-human couple, it’s easier, but it still takes multiple bouts of sex—not like mutants, who light that spark with ease, usually after one instance of oral sex, and certainly after one round of anything more involved.  
  
The thing is, though, he knows this. He wouldn’t have risked possibly letting Erik imprint on him. Anyway, it’s not exactly easy to carelessly imprint: there are a few recorded cases of it happening after a very heated bout of kissing, but it’s theorized that only occurs if the two mutants in question are exceedingly compatible on a biological level. In most instances, it would take more than that, which begs the question: what in the world did he do with Erik to kick off the beginnings of a bond?  
  
Remaining as vexed by the question as he’s been for the last two hours, Charles reaches out his free hand and presses his fingertips down against the paper of one of Erik’s letters. Applying a tiny bit of pressure, he drags the letter towards himself, finally giving in and pinching its edges between his thumb and forefinger in order to lift it up and shake it open. It’s not as though he hasn’t read the thing multiple times before, but knowing now that he’s somehow found himself in the beginnings of a bond, his mind is ravenous for the possibility of some clue that he overlooked in the letters due to his ignorance.  
  
 _Dear Charles,_  
  
 _Yesterday I played chess with one of my generals. He has some degree of skill, but I’m afraid his company lacks in comparison to yours. I lost the last match you and I played, if I recall. We’ll call this war a rematch, shall we? Feel free to tip your king at any time: it’s not as though I enjoy campaigning. Believe it or not, war is distasteful to me as well, and while I will see this land united, I would prefer not to have to carve my way into your kingdom as I’ve had to do with the others. You will have seen the reports of damages and causalities, I have no doubt. Honestly, though, I have no desire to destroy what you’ve worked so hard to build: give yourself up, and I swear to you that I will enter Westchester peacefully._  
  
 _I do have to commend your regiment of men that came to the aid of Mid-Country. They fought well, and while I didn’t expect to see you among them, I did hope. I promise that I will personally ensure that those of your men whom we took prisoner will be treated well. Consider it a gift to you—I’m afraid we don’t have the resources to keep all prisoners particularly well accommodated._  
  
 _I miss you, Charles: our talks and our chess games, your fascination for life around you, and even the pleasure you took in a good bottle of scotch. Though it’s been months since the day you ran, I still find it hard to sleep in my tent without the sounds of you breathing over by the opposite wall._  
  
 _Please, give up this foolish denial of your own biology. There’s no shame in being what you are—not when your very nature makes you so spectacular. We could do great things together, Charles, if only you’d allow for it._  
  
 _Love,_  
 _Erik_  
  
Charles tosses the letter away, hoping to watch it flutter, but it catches the air sideways and slices through it instead, landing and skidding across the desk until it slides to a stop where the desk meets the wall. It’s nearly out of Charles’ reach there: he’d have to strain to retrieve it.   
  
Not that he particularly wants to.  
  
He can distinctly remember how, for weeks after that letter, he’d slept even worse than usual—which was quite a feat. Like Erik, he’d been unsettled without the noise of another’s breathing across the expanse of a space, and to hear that Erik was experiencing similar difficulties had only made it worse. For months he and Erik had shared first a room and then a tent: they hadn’t slept in separate rooms since near to when they’d joined together to defeat Shaw. Raven and the others had never questioned it, picking their own tents and bunkmates based on criteria that Charles had never bothered to ask, though, if he truly wanted to know, surely Armando, Sean, or Alex would be willing to tell him.  
  
At no point does he plan on asking: it wouldn’t make him sleep any easier. Instead, he’s found more solace in lighting a candle deep into the night and pouring over these letters repeatedly. Erik wrote more than thirty of them to him in the three years since Genosha—since Shaw. Most detail Erik’s everyday life and implore Charles to concede, but others, like the one he reaches for now, contain more official matters.  
  
 _Charles,_  
  
 _You are of course well aware that New Hartford has fallen. That was the last region between you and conquered land, Charles. We’re at Westchester’s borders. If a fight is truly what you wish, I’ll oblige you, and while I’m sure you’ll consider a list of terms of surrender an insult, I feel compelled to offer them:_  
  
 _If you agree to open your borders to my army and then, once we reach the border, to allow us to enter the walls of your region’s capital, I will offer a pardon to any from Westchester who might have fought against me in any capacity throughout this war. Additionally, I will allow you a say in choosing who will rule as a regent over Westchester until your son comes of age._  
  
 _This does, of course, imply your personal surrender. The laws of every region—including your own—forbid you from ruling, Charles. A bearer is not permitted to hold his region’s throne. It’s well known that your son is not a bearer, and, assuming that your word on that is true in a way that your word on your own condition has not been, I will hold Westchester in trust until he is old enough to take what belongs to him by virtue of blood. In the meantime, he will reside with you at court in Genosha, which, though you rail against the prospect of joining it, will afford you many opportunities. I understand that you love Westchester in the way any good ruler would, but, in reality, you will have the opportunity to change a larger number of lives while working at my side in Genosha. I don’t intend to strip you of real work, Charles: I’d be a fool not to use your talents. I desire, in fact, to see them used: I want you by my side, working with me to create a better future._  
  
 _Please consider this an official offer for surrender, infused with a bit of the personal. However, as it is official, I do expect an answer from you._  
  
 _Don’t let your pride get in the way of preventing more bloodshed, Charles. Please, accept what I’m offering._  
  
 _All my love,_  
 _Erik_  
  
He had, Charles recalls as he smoothes the note down onto the desk, sent Erik back the curtest note he could compose. Truly, he couldn’t have been any briefer: the note had contained only one word.  
  
 _No._  
  
It had been selfish, he thinks, pulling a little on the cuff that keeps him tied to the chair. He hadn’t been willing to give himself up, and he’d been ready to let people stand between him and Erik in order to prevent that from happening. That’s something that will always eat at his gut late into the night, squeezing his insides and painting his mind with guilt. The reality, though, is that it hadn’t been so very selfish after all. Giving in—he would have been handing Erik his mental abilities and the capacity for control and misuse that came from that. He’d weighed the cost carefully, and, as terrible as it had been, he’d been forced to admit that the loss of life that came from a fight was less severe than the wrongdoing that would ensue if Erik found himself in possession of Charles’ telepathy.  
  
Just as a reminder of how true that’s proving to be, he gives his wrist a good yank and smiles at the bite of metal. It hurts. Good. Any hurt is better than considering how fighting was irrelevant anyhow, given that Erik pushed his way through Charles’ army and has now gained himself a telepath in spite of Charles’ best efforts.  
  
It had been the right thing to do, though, and he will never believe otherwise. He had to at least try, because giving in—offering everything up to Erik—means capitulating to destruction, and that can never be right.  
  
All options were terrible. He’d been pressed into a corner.  
  
It seems he’s still there.  
  
The other letters remain scattered on the desk, but Charles doesn’t reach for them. He knows what they all say—has read them multiple times. There are declarations of love, pleas, more tactics, descriptions of Erik’s leisure time, proposed plans for the future—a barrage of information, and more than Charles cares to contemplate. Often, there is talk of the bond, of how Erik will give him the world if only Charles will give himself to Erik as is proper and good.  
  
And always, Charles’ mind goes back to those months before Shaw. Those months when he and Erik were friends, when things had a different focus—before everything fell apart, because Erik fell in love with him… and he—with what he felt—loving Erik…  
  
It’s possible he was in love with Erik even before Erik was in love with _him_.  
  
Any admission of fondness, even if it’s only mental and terribly begrudging, never fails to act as a harbinger to Erik, gods only know how: Charles could almost laugh when the lock disengages and the heavy wooden door swings open. It’s only bitter irony—not any mental link—that causes Erik’s arrival on the heels of such thought, and that’s what’s funniest—bitterest—of all.  
  
What he isn’t inclined to laugh about is the person trailing behind Erik.  
  
Emma Frost.  
  
She looks as resplendent as the last time Charles saw her. As mercenary and cold as she is, she’s a beautiful physical specimen of female kind, and with a razor-sharp mind to boot. As a non-bearer, she’s learned to play the system in order to gain influence—to use her sexual appeal, and to wedge herself into the niche of society that allows that. She’s good at what she does. Even now, dressed in a tight white dress that scoops over her shoulders and hugs her body, falling a good few inches above her knees, she’s playing biology to her own advantage: her ace is sex, in making men want her for what she is—and it’s a very effective weapon.  
  
In some ways, Charles admires her. In most, he’s disgusted by her.  
  
And he certainly doesn’t favor facing her while tied to a chair.  
  
Immediately, Frost takes one look at Charles and clucks disapprovingly. “Sugar,” she says, glancing over at Erik once they’ve both moved into the room. Erik has ducked back behind her to shut the door and, with a quick wave of his hand, twist the metal until it’s locked. “He looks awful.” The comment earns her a harsh glare from Erik, but he doesn’t deny it.  
  
What did she expect? They can’t possible hope for much more from a beleaguered monarch who’s spent the last year or so trying to repel his severely misguided former best friend from Westchester’s borders. Aside from the problems caused from missing Erik’s presence in his room at night, the stress of the situation has worn him down, and, in this past week when he knew the end was at his door, he can’t imagine that he’s gotten more than thirty hours of sleep total.  
  
There’s also the matter of currently being strapped down to a chair. No one looks dignified like that. Though, looking like death warmed over is probably a gift in this situation—it could very easily be worse. A good many people would give nearly anything for “warmed over” to be tacked to the end of their phrases.  
  
But, tired or not, let it not be said that his mind has dulled to the point where he can’t hold his own. “Emma Frost.” She will _not_ degrade him, and if that means fighting to maintain any possible semblance of dignity, so be it. He’ll do it, despite having to crane his neck to see her at all—and he’ll damn well succeed at it. Erik, apparently realizing his dilemma, waves a hand out quickly, and the restraints at Charles’ wrist and ankles pop open, falling to the floor with a resounding _thud_.  
  
That’s certainly a vast improvement. Not pleasant, still, but about all he can do is rub at his sore wrist and push himself to his feet, turning and facing the two intruders in his room. He very deliberately ignores the pop of protesting joints that have not found favor in being tied down for hours. Though, from Erik’s minute wince, it’s clear that they’re loud enough to be heard.  
  
Continuing to keep his eyes on Frost—and very pointedly ignoring Erik—he arches an eyebrow. “The last time I saw you, my Lady, you were working for a madman.”  
  
Oh, has that hit a nerve? Must have: she tenses, and while her vicious smile doesn’t waver, she looks like she wants him dead a few more percentage points than she did before. “I’m surprised you don’t think I’ve traded one for another.”  
  
“Shaw was a sociopath,” he answers curtly. He hasn’t the time for this. Pointless conversation and drivel—but this is a battle as much as any other, and if she’s testing him—and she is—he can’t very well back down. “And, unlike Shaw, I don’t believe Erik truly enjoys the suffering of others—at least not those who he doesn’t believe have earned it.”  
  
Out of the corner of his eye, he catches the movement of Erik’s eyebrows as they make for his hairline. Rather disconcerting, all things considered: had Erik truly thought Charles considered him to be as bad as Shaw? He’s told him he’s acted in a comparable fashion on occasion, yes, but Erik ought to know better than to believe he’s in Shaw’s league. Their actions may be similar, but their motives are worlds apart, thank the gods, and while the ends may be how history judges, motives are—they’re _important_.  
  
“You may, of course,” he tells Erik with a conceding nod of his head, “correct me if I’m wrong.”  
  
Erik crosses his arms over his chest, scowling as he steps around Frost. “You know you’re not wrong, Charles. Don’t play for effect.”  
  
Charles only shrugs and turns back to Frost. “Regardless, I’d appreciate it if you did me the courtesy of telling me why you’re here, Miss Frost.”  
  
“Polite to the last, aren’t you?” Doesn’t sound like a compliment, the way she says it, holding out one slim hand in order to examine the nails. Feigning boredom is a good tactic—one Charles favors himself—but she apparently hasn’t learned that it only works if your opponent believes it. You have to really sell it.  
  
And there’s no chance that she’s not highly attuned to this situation.  
  
“You haven’t figured it out, Charles?” Erik seems strangely ill at ease, almost melancholy in his tone. He hadn’t been like that before—he’d been scowling, for gods’ sake, so it must have been the question that triggered it. He’s broken into Charles’ kingdom, assaulted him in his room, tackled him in a hallway, and _now_ he’s choosing to be uneasy?  
  
Wonderful.  
  
Because if Erik is unsettled? Then whatever he’s planning, he believes he’s crossed a line. That is to say, he’s crossed one of _his_ lines—not a line Charles laid out for him. Whatever Erik is about to do, even he feels that it’s unacceptable.  
  
A slow grind starts up in Charles’ chest.  
  
“I find, Erik,” he says primly—he’s been told he’s always more clipped and formal when irritated—as he takes a step back, intending to put more distance between them, just to be safe, “that while I knew you had some interesting bedfellows, I was not expecting you to fall in with the employees of a man you spent years working to apprehend.”  
  
There’s a very good possibility that Erik knows exactly what he’s thinking. It would certainly explain the discomfort on his face, and how he breathes out a large sigh that moves his whole chest. “I’m going to ask you once more, Charles: pull those memories back out into your conscious mind.”  
  
The moment it clicks—that, right _there_ —no, Erik can’t be serious—he reels back as if slapped. The first few steps away from Erik are instinct, but the ones after that are simply decisions borne of common sense.  
  
Erik makes no effort to follow him, instead electing to remain by the door next to an increasingly annoyed Emma Frost. “Charles—“  
  
“You’ll fail, you know.” Fifteen feet? Not far enough away from Erik, but there’s no sense in backing himself into a corner either. His retreat has put him solidly in the middle of the room, a few feet in front of the couches and the table that holds the chess set. The one with the tipped king. It’s laid there since Erik entered, unmoved, though there’s no doubt that Erik has seen it. “I’m a stronger telepath than she is, and you _know_ that. She won’t be able to pry open my mind.”  
  
Erik nods, which, more than anything he’s said, sinks in the chill. “No,” he agrees quietly, pushing his hands down into his pockets and looking away, mouth turned down in a frown. “She can’t. But you and I—we’ve started a bond. So… _I_ can.”  
  
Bloody hell.  
  
Erik can—can—no, don’t move, stay here, don’t _move_. If he moves, he’s going to lose it—any bit of composure he has, it’s going to fly south for the winter, take off, head for the hills— _whatever_. It’s going to be _gone_. “You don’t know what to look for—what it looks like when a telepath hides something.” But it’s already bitterly clear what Erik’s answer will be.  
  
Sure enough: “But _she_ does. I only have to open your mind to allow her to look.”  
  
What right does Erik have to look so pained by that thought? _He_ is the one suggesting it—but he does. Look pained, that is. Really, truly regretful, like he’s only doing what he thinks will be best for Charles, and only under extreme duress. It’s the sort of look that defines exactly the reality of marriage, as twisted as it is. How many guardians have looked just as Erik does now? Simply doing what they have to do. Doing what’s best for a bearer who doesn’t know any better, who needs decisions made for him.  
  
It’s sick, that’s what it is. Controlling, and manufactured by Shaw, and no one can see it, because this is _life_ now, engrained deep enough that it isn’t questioned. No one sees—no one _understands_.  
  
The feeling of sickness increases until his stomach is rolling: _this_ is what _he_ could be too. He could do this to the world with his mind. Just doing what’s best for them. He knows best. Imposing his thoughts on them. Playing the puppeteer, tugging them to dance to his will. And all because he’s convinced he’s right.  
  
What if it happens? What if…? He shivers. No. He’s made it this far, has slipped up on occasion, used his gifts in ways he shouldn’t, but it was always small things, and he’s never— _will_ never—  
  
He keeps on shivering, and, after a few moments, he shoves his hands into his pockets to hide it. Enough of his weakness is already laid bare; no need to add to the display.  
  
Despite his best efforts, Erik notices anyway. He stills, observing Charles with something approaching confusion, to the point of hesitancy: Erik’s background has not equipped him to be naturally comforting—no one ever gave _him_ comfort after his mother died, and a thousand times over, Charles would like to take Shaw to task for what he did to Erik—and it shows now in how he wavers, one foot shuffling forward but pulling up short before he finally gives in and commits, lurching toward Charles with the same sort of conviction that he always possesses once he’s made a decision.  
  
Letting Erik approach him is very obviously a mistake, but he may as well be rooted to the ground, limbs numb and his mind drifting in limbo, only half believing that Erik will follow through with this. It’s that uncertainty—that infernal hope—that keeps him there as Erik approaches, stopping in front of him and slowly raising both hands to Charles’ face. Charles follows his movements only with his eyes, remaining entirely motionless when Erik’s palms settle over his cheeks, thumbs working up into Charles’ hairline and drawing light circles there in his hair, intent on soothing.  
  
Up close like this, Erik’s eyes appear very green, amplified by the dying light in the room. No one has come to light the candles yet tonight, and if they hold off for more than another half hour, the room will lose its light entirely. More than likely, that will be the case: it’s hard to imagine that Erik will allow anyone entrance during… whatever this is, just for something as trivial as lighting the candles. There are matches in the desk, though: Erik may choose to do it himself. Charles would do it, if he thought Erik would let him go long enough to for something so trivial as light by which to see.  
  
The firm grip on his head does not indicate that Erik will be so inclined.  
  
As if to prove that point, Erik continues the gentle stroking through Charles’ hair as the seconds tick by, and—this, something, anything that will stop this from rolling onwards, please, let it present itself. He needs to speak: the silence is only allowing this to snowball, but he can’t look away from the intense gaze that’s locked with his. Every blink Erik takes is mesmerizing, and Charles only notices after he’s done it that he’s begun to match his own blinks to Erik’s. Erik, however, must have taken note, because a small, satisfied smile curves his mouth, and some of the sheer energy in his eyes has eased into something quieter and—dare it be said? Domestic.  
  
When Erik does finally speak, his tone is low and careful, and though Frost remains in the room, his words are for Charles alone: “I need you to understand,” he murmurs, keeping up his rhythmic carding of his thumbs through Charles’ hair. The onset of words has again dialed up the intensity in his eyes, and it makes Charles startle, jerking halfheartedly against Erik’s hands, only to subside when it’s clear that Erik doesn’t mean to let go. “You need to know why I’m doing this to you, Charles, because, without an explanation, I know that it seems unspeakably cruel, and I don’t want you to ever believe I would do this without good reason.”  
  
“Is this the part where you tell me you love me and you’re doing this all for my benefit?” The words slip out quietly, which is strange, when it feels like he’s shouting them.  
  
Erik’s hands twitch against his skin. The movement sticks, impeded by the hint of sweat that’s turning Erik’s palms clammy. “Do you want to hear it?”  
  
He shakes his heads against Erik’s hands.  
  
“Then I won’t say it.”  
  
As if staying quiet negates the sentiment. It doesn’t. And the layer of guilt in Erik’s gaze—well, that they _both_ know that.  
  
“I need you to lie down,” Erik says, though the flatness of his tone suggests that he has no real hope of Charles doing so willingly.  
  
Best not to disappoint him, yes? Fighting—doing anything else would be unthinkable, but it’s still so pointless, and all of them present are aware of that crippling reality. The realness of that is down in his bones, in the slow press of inevitability on his lungs and on his hope. If he feels this wrung out now, what will he be months from now? Years from now?  
  
Erik’s nails drag lightly over the skin of Charles’ cheeks as he lets his hands drop, trailing down and off his chin, not breaking contact until the last possible patch of skin. Even then, the break doesn’t last: his hands move to circle Charles’ wrists, gripping loosely as of yet, but with the promise of restraint when it becomes necessary.  
  
“Just settle back on the bed. Will you do that, _Schatz_?” Asked like a prayer, with Erik’s posture doing the begging, bending his head to even the height difference and keep a straight line of eye contact.  
  
No. Gods, no.  
  
Charles shakes his head.  
  
And chaos breaks.  
  
Everything starts with the tightening of Erik’s hands about his wrists. It’s as if the squeeze sends a pulse of blood up through Charles’ arms and into his heart, kick-starting the dulled panic that’s been brewing all along. It surges up through the rest of him, and he finds himself thrashing and twisting, lunging out at Erik with every intent to do serious harm. They’ve been near each other for only a handful of hours, and already they’ve fought more physically than Charles would ever have thought possible in those days before Shaw.  
  
His friend, Erik—where is _that_ man? _That_ Erik? He’s not this person—this man who’s dragging Charles by his wrists to the bed, hushing him, but not—he’s not stopping. He isn’t going to stop.  
  
Charles can hear himself swearing.  
  
To the side, Frost stands coolly, observing the scene with her hands on her hips and with a detached distaste. How much of this sort of thing has she seen? Working for Shaw, it’s hard to say—or too easy to say, and terrifyingly simple to imagine. The man was sick, and, after being so close to that, this must be mild for her. The things she seen, the things she’s done—but Erik has joined her, or she has joined Erik, and now it is Charles—not a nameless, theoretical person who has only been a name on a brief crossing Charles’ desk—who is being tossed open for her butchering.  
  
 _[Erik, Erik, stop—]_  
  
He doesn’t realize he’s crying out mentally until Erik inhales sharply, and, for the barest of seconds, pauses, letting Charles writhe and kick against him unimpeded. But Erik recovers quickly, surging forward with renewed vigor. He probably blames himself for the lapse—may even think it’s more damaging to Charles not to be firm in this. Charles—he can’t _think_. Not properly. But that sounds like Erik, or something he’d reason. Not that Charles ever expected _this_.  
  
Whether or not Charles’ use of telepathic abilities is what prompts him, Erik takes that moment to call up the metal in the room. A candlestick on the table, the metal fire poker—both jump to his command, whizzing across the room toward him. Out of instinct, Charles cries out, reflex convincing him he’s about to be bludgeoned, but the metal stops inches from Erik’s hand, hanging in the air and twirling lazily for a short space of time before a twist of Erik’s fingers fits it around Charles’ wrists and ankles.  
  
A quick jerk pulls Charles’ hands up over his head, and the metal morphs again, part of it turning pointed and lunging forward to punch its way through the wooden headboard of Charles’ bed. Like a needle through cloth, it bursts back out the other side before melding back down over Charles’s wrists, effectively creating a wooden rung for the metal to loop around and hold Charles securely. Erik seems content to leave his feet bound together, though not tethered to any immovable object.  
  
Exhaling heavily, Erik drops his hand, his entire body relaxing and collapsing into a kneeling position on the bed next to Charles.  
  
For all the respite that offers, though, he may just as well have remained standing: turning to Frost, he asks, “Are you ready?” while one hand slides up to rest over Charles’ heaving chest, rubbing lightly in an attempt to infuse calm.  
  
Like hell is _that_ going to happen.  
  
“The hold-up has been all you, I’m afraid,” she informs him, smiling thinly. “In most instances where I’ve been needed to perform this service, those requesting it haven’t felt the need to coddle the subject in question.”  
  
If she knows what’s good for her, she’ll refrain from making any similar comments, which she ought to know, if she’s giving any heed to the shift of Erik’s expressions: the sheer disbelief and, in its wake, the indignant rage that washes over Erik’s face is a blatant warning. “He is to be my _husband_ ,” Erik snarls, showing far too many teeth for the expression to be at all congenial. “This is no butcher job, do you understand me? I had thought I made that clear previously, but in the event that I have not—“ He stops, closing his mouth and grinding his jaw. Frost does appear to have some measure of self-preservation: upon seeing the darkening of Erik’s expression, her eyebrows rise and her face smoothes out, paling slightly. She may be trying for unaffected detachment, but her lips are a bit too tight and too obviously holding back tremors for that to be the case.  
  
“In case I have not been clear,” Erik beings again, lower this time, his hand closing and bunching in Charles’ shirt, “if you do him any damage, I will take it out of your hide. And I _will_ know if you hurt him, because I will be there with you, inside his mind, for every step of it. Any attempt to shut me out, and you will find metal in parts of your body where it shouldn’t be.” He swallows and dips his chin, staring menacingly down his nose at her. “It will hurt. I will _ensure_ that it hurts. Am I lacking in any sort of clarity _now_?”  
  
She snorts, but the attempt at nonchalance falls flat. Points for trying, though. Most people wouldn’t have the courage in the face of this sort of anger. “We were clear before, sugar,” she answers soothingly—or as soothingly as she can manage. “Now, do you want to do this or not?”  
  
How lovely of them to have this discussion right over the top of the head of the subject in question. Charles grinds his teeth down in a move to rival Erik’s. _He_ is the one whose mind is about to be flayed open, and to treat him as though he isn’t here—  
  
There is nothing for it. But he’ll be damned if he doesn’t find some way to make this come back to bite them. Maybe not now. But eventually. Somehow.  
  
“What do you need me to do?” Erik asks finally after a very pregnant pause. A sadistic action, and awkward to boot—how can Erik _do_ this?  
  
The prospect of having the endeavor back on course visibly relaxes Frost. Her shoulders lower, and she adopts an easier smirk, though when she looks at Charles, her eyes are hard and devoid of sympathy. It isn’t a difficult look to recognize: she’s seeing him as a job. Nothing more.  
  
It’s quite a realization—so much so that he leans back into the pillow and snaps his mouth shut, trying to grasp for anything about that thought that might make this situation bearable. She’s damaged too. Shaw—the things he could have done to her. The things he _must_ have done to her, if she was with him so long. Rather like Erik in that respect, actually—and would she also be like Erik in that, though he seldom becomes attached to people, when he does, it’s frighteningly deep? Erik too is capable of viewing people as means to an end—he does it all the time. He discards the human aspect of the person before him, because it’s easier that way, and he’s learned that detachment. Frost is doing it also, right now. If Charles could do that back, see her as nothing more than a thing hurting him—  
  
But he can’t. That has never been him, and perhaps that is down to his life experiences—he has never been through those things that Erik has lived—but he cannot be anything else and live with himself. For better or for worse, this is what he’s grown to be, and he can’t change it now.  
  
People are not expendable. No one is nothing. And he cannot believe otherwise.  
  
If he could believe other than he does, it would hurt so much less when Erik’s hands settle on his temples, followed quickly by his mind, pushing forward. If he didn’t feel the humanity in Erik, he wouldn’t care, and, oh, how badly he wants not to care. This hurts, Erik pushing forward like that, and he fights, lashes back mentally as the world grays before him, his vision blinking out as he’s pushed under, tackled back into his own mind by Erik’s invasion.  
  
Before he snaps backward into his own mind, the last thing he sees is Erik with his eyes closed, hovering over him, arms bracketing him in as he rests his hands on Charles’s temples.  
  
The sight vanishes and the world sinks out of existence: he’s left in his own mind, tangled with Erik, like two little boys wrestling to pin the other.  
  
Any other person, and Charles would toss him out. He’d never have gained entrance in the first place. But it’s as though every place Erik touches him—every bit of himself that makes contact with Erik in their wrestling match—goes limp and lethargic. It is, of course, only a metaphor: these are not his muscles relaxing, but rather his mind. Every mental part of him with which he tries to fight Erik crumples at Erik’s mental touch, unwilling—or unable—to rebel against the commands given.  
  
 _[Be calm, Darling]_ Erik murmurs into his mind, sympathetic and soothing and so, so regretful. [ _I won’t hurt you.]_  
  
 _[GetoutGetoutGetout.]_  
  
Another shield gives, and apparently that’s the best of the dam, because everything breaks after that, and all of Erik comes rushing in amidst Charles’ mental cries and panic. His mind feels swollen with the surge of it, but Erik balances quickly, and before Charles can do much else, his mind is being propped open, akin to when an item is shoved between a door and its frame to stop it from closing.  
  
Emma steps through seconds after.  
  
 _[Don’t, Erik, don’t let her, don’tdon’tdon’t—]_  
  
 _[Hush, Charles, it’s all right.]_  
  
It’s not all right. It will never be all right again.  
  
 _[Of course it will be. Just relax.]_  
  
The worst of it all is the burning conviction of Erik’s—impossible to hide when their minds are melded like this—that he can make things right. There’s no overlooking the burning belief that Charles is being, quite understandably under the circumstances, Erik is willing to admit, ruled by his panic and pain. But Erik—he’s so convinced that it will get better, that once this passes, _then_ they’ll be able to make something good together.  
  
 _[Do you know what to look for?]_ Erik asks, pushing the thought toward Emma.  
  
And her mental reply: [ _A moment, please.]_  
  
The touch of her mind is a thousand times worse than Erik’s mental touch. There’s no way it could be otherwise: Erik, though he’s lost in a mire of ingrained pain and misguided intentions, does at least hold affection for the mind he’s entering.  
  
But Emma—she holds no positive feeling for him beyond a mild interest. Having that crawling around in his mind reminds him of bleach on cloth, burning through everything it touches—not immediately, but eating the cloth with prolonged contact.  
  
 _[Get OUT]_ he screams at her, shoving at her presence with every mental burst of malevolence that he possesses…  
  
Only to have his entire offensive caught and halted by Erik.  
  
All of his attempts to harm dissipate into nothing with a rapidity so startling that Charles’ mind shakes with it. If he were to draw out of his mind right now, he suspects he’d find that he’s having physical convulsions.  
  
Despite being foiled, his actions do seem to have some effect: Frost, who had instinctively flinched back at the assault, moves forward more cautiously this time, creeping like that slow spread of bleach spill—though more precise, and less like a terrifying dousing.  
  
It’s difficult to say how long it takes her to sort through his mind and find what she’s looking for. Of course he twists and kicks and fights with any and all mental capacity that he possesses, but Erik holds him at every attempt, always with appeasing words and a liberal dose of penitent affection—and that is really what cuts to the bone, isn’t it? Erik is _sorry_. Somehow, he’s gotten it in his mind that this is necessary—but he isn’t enjoying it, and Charles can feel the regret rising off the other man’s mind like steam on a hot surface. Necessity—or the perception of it—has pushed him to this, which is the worst of all, because this _isn’t necessary at all._  
  
It’s obvious the moment Frost finds her target. How, he couldn’t really say. Like anything well hidden, he hadn’t known that this part of his mind was a place in which he should look. All conscious thought simply passes over this space, seeing nothing and perceiving even less.  
  
More than likely, that’s how Frost found it. If something screams _don’t look_ hard enough, one who doesn’t want to see may avoid it, but those who are truly looking—they’ll be drawn. If he were to enact this procedure on another, that’s what he would look for, and he does have to give Miss Frost credit—she’s very competent at this—this—  
  
Call it extraction. Close enough—a working term, at least, for an unworkable procedure.  
  
For such an undertaking, the end is surprisingly simple: one little tug sets the whole ball of memory unraveling, and quicker than a dropped spool of yarn, the memories begin rolling out through his mind, playing film-like across his psyche. At a movie, a person could close his eyes—but this—he cannot look away from his _mind_. Images scatter, bursting into his brain until his whole mindscape is luminescent with the light of it.  
  
He can’t look away.  
  
 _“Killing Shaw will not bring you peace.”_  
  
 _“Peace was never an option.”_  
  
 _Days of this now. Living in this tent, inching ever so slowly closer to Shaw’s position, always in as covert a manner as possible. They’ve been living in mud, it seems, but Charles has, almost as compensation, been living in the pleasure of Erik’s company. It’s been a relief, having a friend for what feels like the first time. Raven is something else—family. But Erik… he’s isn’t about responsibility or near-paternal care. Erik is good conversation and camaraderie, a sense of understanding and easy silence. He’s an acceptance all his own._  
  
 _And Charles has let himself enjoy it._  
  
 _Perhaps, in the midst of that, he’s let himself forget why Erik is here. Remembering now… it’s anything but pleasant._  
  
 _The light in their tent is dying, and, with it, Charles can feel his hold on the conversation slipping as well. If Erik never aspired to anything better, how can he possibly be convinced he can be anything more? Erik’s point of view—it’s not so difficult to understand. Shaw has taken so much from him, and from the time Erik was a child, his whole world has been focused on retribution. He’s built his identity on it. And to ask him to forsake that now, simply for the sake of a friendship? Preposterous, and completely unthinkable._  
  
 _And, yet, Charles can’t deny that he’s on the brink of asking in those terms regardless._  
  
 _“You’re disappointed,” Erik notes, his brow wrinkling as he leans forward over the chessboard. The back of his canvas chair grinds under the pressure, but despite how many times the piece of furniture has been bundled up and thrown into a bag for transportation, it continues to hold. “I’ve disappointed you.”_  
  
 _Charles shrugs. “You never pretended to be here for any other reason. I hardly have a right to be surprised.”_  
  
 _In the lantern light, Erik’s eyes snap with brightness. It’s hard to look away. “You know, Charles, you_ do _make me want to be a better man. But this is something that I won’t back down from, not even for you.”_  
  
 _The canvas of his own seat is becoming uncomfortable—cutting off circulation—and Charles shifts, eyeing Erik over the chessboard, game mostly forgotten. “What, killing Shaw or chasing your idea of total mutant supremacy?” Even he can hear the lack of credibility that he gives to the last idea._  
  
 _Erik must too, because his lip quirks, and he chuckles. “Both.”_  
  
 _“And have you forgotten that you’re fighting against Shaw’s attempts to bring this land under one central, mutant-run rule? He wants humans relegated to a lower class also, Erik. If you truly claim to hate him so much, how can you agree with what he wants?”_  
  
 _The look on Erik’s face flickers and darkens, and, apparently giving the game up for a lost cause, he fixes Charles with a not entirely amiable smile as he reaches over and, only half-playfully, tips Charles’ king. “Shaw does our own kind harm, Charles. But he’s right to believe that humans aren’t to be trusted. Or are you simply blind to the number of attacks on mutants that occur each year?”_  
  
 _“Their violence is often provoked.” He frowns down at his felled king before shooting Erik an annoyed glance, but Erik only smiles thinly and raises one eyebrow. It seems they’ve moved directly from physical chess to mental chess, and, in deference to what seems inevitable, Charles simply sighs and reaches for the box in which the portable game is stored. “When we treat them as second class citizens, we can hardly expect them to act benevolently.”_  
  
 _“So we reward their violence with leniency?”_  
  
 _“We need to be the better men, Erik.”_  
  
 _“We already_ are _.”_  
  
 _“Are we?” Sighing, he finishes sweeping the pieces off the board and sets it aside. “Are we really? It was Shaw who killed your mother, who tortured you—and he’s fully mutant. From where I’m sitting, mutants appear to have the same capacity for greed and harm as humans do.”_  
  
 _“Shaw deserves to die, yes, and I’ll see to it that it happens. But that doesn’t negate the fact that we are superior to humankind. And it doesn’t change that they fear us, and that their fear has turned to hatred.”_  
  
 _“Not all humans hate us. Moira—”_  
  
 _Erik scoffs and waves him off. “You think all humans are like Moira.”_  
  
 _“And you think they’re all like Shaw.”_  
  
 _“Have you slept with her yet?”_  
  
 _That was… hardly the direction he expected this conversation to take. Erik is direct, often abrasively so, but the edge of bitterness in Erik’s voice when he asks that question is rather unexpected. Why should Erik begrudge him his conquests? And, if he does, Charles cannot imagine why he finds that he does indeed care that Erik is bothered._  
  
 _“Why do you ask?”_  
  
 _Erik’s mouth flattens out in apparent satisfaction. “You haven’t.”_  
  
 _“No,” he admits, searching Erik’s face for any hint of, why, exactly, this conversation has taken this path. It’s hardly one he’d prefer—he can’t very well tell Erik that, no, he hasn’t slept with Moira. He hasn’t slept with anyone, actually, because the moment he does, there will be no hiding exactly what he is. And that is something he will only ever reveal once he’s sure—once he’s absolutely certain that the woman in question will keep his secret. “And why is this relevant to_ you _?”_  
  
 _The force of Erik’s sudden gaze is like having a dozen spotlights turned on him all at once. “You could do much better than to sleep with a human.”_  
  
 _Charles shifts uncomfortably, not necessarily because of the seat, but because that’s… terribly insulting, actually. Not to him, but definitely to Moira, who is someone Erik works alongside, and whom he ought to respect. More than that, the slight of hint of—dare he say it?—jealousy that he’s beginning to detect hanging about Erik’s person—it’s unsettling. Very much so._  
  
 _Because, no matter what connection he feels to Erik—and he will not deny that, yes, there is one there, though he’s taken care to confine it to a friendship that has, admittedly, become oddly deep alarmingly fast—there is no chance of him allowing Erik any liberty to act on anything he might reciprocate. It’s impossible. If Erik were to find out—_  
  
 _It doesn’t bear thinking about._  
  
 _“Any man would be lucky to have Moira,” he replies shortly as he gets to his feet and, moving across the tent, places the chess set into his pack. He can feel Erik’s eyes following him the entire way, and the scrutiny trips him up with the help of the edge of his cot._  
  
 _Swearing, he twists, catching himself halfway down, arms braced on the bed. Regardless of the mattress, the fall jars up along his arms. Bloody thin padding. Pathetic. But, once he’s arrested his fall, he lowers himself the rest of the way to sit on the cot._  
  
 _Or he tries: before he can get there, Erik’s hand materializes on his elbow._  
  
 _“Erik?” he asks, going still._  
  
 _It’s not Erik’s touch so much as his expression that leeches out Charles’ ability to move. He feels pinned, like the frogs he grew up dissecting—and, yes, it’s possible to maybe regret that now, a little bit anyway, when he’s gaining such unsettling first-hand experience._  
  
 _“You deserve better,” Erik murmurs, leaning forward._  
  
 _He hadn’t realized he’d let himself settle into Erik’s grip, holding himself upright by means of it, until he falls back all the way down to the cot. The thing beneath him has a right to be called a mattress only insomuch as it’s shaped like one, damn it._  
  
 _Erik doesn’t seem to notice: his hand remains firmly on Charles’ elbow, and now that Charles is seated, he too crouches down, settling just barely beyond Charles’ knees. The proximity itself is daunting, but Erik ignores the pinch of Charles’ brows and pushes forward, raising his hands and—what is he thinking?—setting them lightly on the outside of Charles’ knees, cupping skin and bone._  
  
 _“Erik,” he breathes. “What are you doing?” Not what it looks like, surely. Erik knows as well as anyone else that relationships between two guardians are forbidden. In a world where reproduction is paramount, it would be counter-productive to—_  
  
 _“There’s something about you, Charles. I can’t explain it.”_  
  
 _Good gods, hopefully not. It probably has something to do with the chemicals Charles’ body is putting off—chemicals that Erik doesn’t know exist, but which he’s probably experiencing the effects of nonetheless. That—it’s never happened before quite like this, but that doesn’t preclude the possibility that it’s occurring now. He—he’d be lying if he denied finding Erik attractive, captivating—_ a very suitable mate _his hindbrain supplies quite unhelpfully. That—this damned interest on his own behalf—never happened before either._  
  
 _But, then, he’s never had many close friends. And, those friends he did have—none of them were quite like Erik._  
  
 _“Whatever you’re thinking,” he says slowly. “You need to stop.”_  
  
 _But Erik only grins, a little lopsided, eager, and very, very amused. “And what am I thinking, Charles?”_  
  
 _He shakes his head, refusing, because—he won’t read Erik’s mind. He doesn’t want to read it. Seeing… it would make it real. If Erik backs out now, Charles won’t have seen, and they can chalk this up to a joke. A bad one, but nothing to be taken seriously._  
  
 _As it becomes clear that Charles isn’t going to answer, Erik’s grin drops away, dipping into a consternated frown. Charles is already bracing himself for another round of uncomfortable words… but Erik does something more unsettling. Far more unsettling._  
  
 _He surges forward and up, pressing his lips to Charles own and holding there, quivering against Charles’ mouth._  
  
 _Oh. Oh, gods. This cannot—it cannot be happening. He needs to move, needs to pull back, but—but—Erik, and—_  
  
 _“Mmm,” he mutters, trying for “move” and failing, but the attempt bends his lips against Erik’s own, creating friction, and a part of him melts, dissolving down into instinct and the cursed trap that is biology—if he can say that. If it isn’t just Erik—if it isn’t something deeper than biology, because there have been others before—other men who had registered as good mates—and he’d always skipped over them, but Erik—_  
  
 _Bloody hell._ Erik.  
  
 _He protests into Erik’s mouth. Truly, he does: whispers the words and curses directly into Erik’s lips, and Erik answers him, feeding his own words right back into the wetness of Charles’ mouth, chasing with his tongue and following with his body, sliding up the cot, up between Charles’ legs, arm snaking to encircle Charles’ back._  
  
 _“I won’t, I won’t, I wont,” Charles breathes, sliding the words off his tongue and onto Erik’s own. He even makes to shove Erik away, but his hands cradle instead, cupping shoulder blades through the light cloth of Erik’s nightshirt. “You are bad for me, and I will not,” is lost down Erik’s throat, and “Stop” never gets said at all._  
  
 _But it should have._  
  
 _Nothing could be more important._  
  
 _And he pays for staying quiet._  
  
 _The first snap of friction in his mind hits him like an electrical charge—something like static electricity. It’s more surprising than painful—feels a bit good, actually—and at first he doesn’t know what it is—only that it’s followed by a series of other bursts, little pops that bubble up in his mind and combust, pushing against his barriers and then flattening out, turning needle-like and threading through his thoughts before twinging amongst the deeper parts of his mind only seconds later._  
  
 _By that point… he knows. And what he can’t fail to know—what’s more important—is that it’s too late._  
  
 _He’s utterly lost._  
  
 _“Get off me,” he finally manages to say to the air, pushed by fear and panic to finally, finally give Erik that real shove and send him sprawling, landing on his backside and, for a handful of seconds, staring up at Charles with mute shock. That’s short lived: it breaks down into understanding, and, while Erik is obviously displeased, he’s radiating a patience that is absolutely terrifying in its intention._  
  
 _With great precision, Erik plants his hands down behind him and levels himself up, sitting with his back straight and his attention entirely centered on Charles. The full force of his regard sends tiny sparks off again in Charles’ brain, shocking him with clips of pleasure until his breathing speeds up and he has to look away._  
  
 _What has he gotten himself into?_  
  
 _“I know you liked it, Charles,” Erik says calmly. “I could feel a sort of… well, something in my head. You were projecting.”_  
  
 _Yes… and if Erik ever knows exactly what it is that he just felt, Charles’ whole life will be toppled. Already the beginnings of panic are settling low and unmovable in his organs, turning his stomach and squeezing his heart into a frantic beat. What has he done? What did he just make happen? If he sparked a bond, it’s not something to walk away from—_  
  
 _If he sparked a bond, it can’t be broken._  
  
 _He’s—shit, he’s—_  
  
 _“Charles?” He can’t take the worry in Erik’s voice; he turns away, groping almost blindly for the lantern on the table beside the cot. There will be maps there. Things to study. Things for tomorrow. Reasons to dismiss Erik._  
  
 _“I need to go over these again,” he says primly, not looking at Erik. He can’t. He simply can’t. If he does— “This was a mistake. And we need to prepare for tomorrow.”_  
  
 _“Charles—“_  
  
 _“It’s illegal, Erik, and irresponsible. It shouldn’t have happened.”_  
  
 _“We could make it work—“_  
  
 _“We damn well could_ not _!” he snarls, this time rounding on Erik, and it’s not that he’s truly angry—this is as much his fault as it is Erik’s, and he cannot blame anyone else for his own lack of self-control—but panic is making him snappish, and he needs to drive Erik away from him Right. Now._  
  
 _Erik is standing halfway across the tent in the only area of it where he can straighten up fully. At some point, he’s settled his hands loosely on his hips, as if he needs the support just to keep his body upright. His face certainly suggests that he’s at the end of what he can handle: Charles has never seen so many emotions all mixed up in one place. Anger, frustration, pain, pity, condescension, confusion—Erik’s fit to explode, but he manages it admirably, forcing it all down under a cold, controlled clenched jaw and a thinning of his lips._  
  
 _And what can Charles say to that? Nothing. Nothing that will be adequate. And, yet, he needs to say_ something.  
  
 _“You’re my best friend,” he settles for saying at last. “But I can’t give you anything more than that. I rule a region, Erik, and this—this—_ whatever _this is—“ He waves his hand toward the space between them. “It would disqualify me from ruling. I’m helping people, Erik, in a way no one else is willing to do, and I won’t give that up, not even for you.”_  
  
 _The worst thing of all? It’s that, just a little bit, he wants to. His body is screaming at him to do it, to tell Erik, and to let this whole thing take care of itself. But… then his mind catches up, and he’s inundated with flashes of what that life would be like. Powerless, confined, the wedding alone would probably kill him. There’s too much in the way: he won’t live like that—live the life that the truth would necessitate—and he won’t abandon his people._  
  
 _Unsurprisingly, Erik doesn’t seem willing to concede: he marches a few steps forward, stopping only when Charles abruptly jerks a hand up, demanding he stay where he is. Oh. Charles… hadn’t expected obedience, but he’s thankful for it nonetheless._  
  
 _“And what will you do, Charles? Marry Moira? Just ignore what happened here?”_  
  
 _Yes, more than Erik knows. If a bond has indeed been initiated—and it’s a near miracle that Erik hasn’t noticed what happened, as he’d probably have immediately recognized it for what it is if he’d known what_ Charles _is—it will have to be suppressed. It can’t be broken, but maybe if—if the memories were cut out, if the happenings of this night ended at a chess game, or a kiss that wasn't returned, he could function. He’ll—he’ll—that will be something to think on later._  
  
 _“Probably,” Charles admits. “I’m attracted to her. I respect her. I think I could love her.”_  
  
 _Erik looks a little like he’s been slapped, though really more like he’s on the verge of slapping someone else. Though, not Charles—the anger only directs partially at him, and more toward the world at large, as if he’s certain it’s forced Charles to be this way._  
  
 _He’s not entirely wrong._  
  
 _“And you’ll just pretend this didn’t happen?_  
  
 _Charles nods. “Yes. I think that’s best.”_  
  
 _“Charles—“_  
  
 _He turns away. It—it physically hurts. A bond isn’t easy to deny, and it’s calling for completion. He’s—how could he have been so very, very stupid? How could he have let this happen?_  
  
 _“I need to prepare, Erik,” he says, picking up the maps with a heavy hand. “And so do you. Kindly let the subject drop.”_  
  
 _Behind him, he hears a harsh exhale of breath. For a moment he’s certain Erik is going to come after him, pull him back around, force him to face this, but that belief dissipates quickly when he hears the sound of Erik’s retreating feet and then, seconds after, the noise of a tent flap torn open and then thrown back into place._  
  
 _Charles does not turn. He hardly even breathes._  
  
 _This is right. It hurts, but it’s right. And it cannot be otherwise._  
  
 _There’s simply too much at risk._


	5. Chapter 5

Charles falls out of the memory screaming. He can feel it the instant he drops back into the current flow of his mind. It’s set alight with his panic, running down every nerve, acting as the best defense that he has. He can’t move his mind—can’t pull away—  
  
 _/What the hell is wrong with him?/_ Erik’s voice snarls at Emma in his head. And damn if that doesn’t just push him right over the edge. Emma is here, still here, butchering his mind—  
  
Emma’s presence burns like acid in his thoughts. He lashes out again, once, twice, each time caught by Erik’s mental hold, and the only comfort available is the strain he can feel in Erik—the sheer effort it’s taking him to hold Charles back.  
  
 _/He buried the memory, and it’s not pleasant to have it pulled out/_ she answers. _/It’s not hurting him—not really./_  
  
No? Well it bloody well feels like it is. She’s right—it won’t damage him. She’s being careful. But it’s like an incision—open it up and do what you have to do, then sew it back up, but there will always be scars. If Erik doesn’t think he’s going to remember this, hate this—he’s insane. They’re both insane. The whole gods damned world is insane.  
  
 _/There’s another memory/_ Erik thinks a little frantically. _/I know there is./_  
  
Emma probes in again, and—that hurts, _hurts_. Frantic, he lets out a mental howl. Beings that do this to their own kind—she’s a telepath too—horrible, despicable, and if he could just get a hold of her mind—  
  
 _/Yes. One more./_  
  
 _/Then for gods’ sake/_ Erik snaps. _/Pull it forward and_ finish _this./_  
  
Love—if this were love, Erik wouldn’t—it _hurts_.  Ripping through his mind, holding it open—and she cuts and cuts at it. It’s a violation of everything; he grinds out a whine as Emma reaches forward and pulls, nearly dragging forward the second memory—it’s sadistic and horrid what she’s doing—don’t let her see—don’t—  
  
 _/HowcouldyouHowcouldyouHowcouldyou/_  
  
Erik startles. Didn’t he know, or at least think—or was he so convince that Charles was beyond rational coherence at this point? He ought to know, pain doesn’t always make one incoherent, but, sometimes, just more focused. _/Don’t fight, Charles, please. You’re making it harder for her to get at the memories, and that’s why it hurts. It won’t hurt if you stop fighting./_  
  
Lie back and think of Westchester? No, _no._ Not anymore, not when Westchester—it’s gone. Erik has taken it, and his baby, his wife—  
  
Erik’s anxiety and guilt radiates all down through his mental voice. _/Your son is here, Charles. When we’re done, I’ll get him for you, all right?/_  
  
David? Here? Erik found him, oh— _oh,_ he found him, could hurt him—what if he does this sort of thing to David too? No, he can’t, can’t—  
  
And then Emma yanks, and everything dissolves into memory.  
  
 _Awakening hurts. There’s really no other explanation for it. Of course, there’s a shade of pleasure to it too: if he’s perfectly honest, he hadn’t expected to wake at all. He’d thought he was dead after he’d frozen Shaw, after Erik had lifted that coin—_  
  
 _There had been blood. So much. Erik, begging for him to stay conscious, and—_  
  
 _“You almost bled out, you know,” says a quiet voice from beside him. “The doctor was very clear on that. If that sword cut had been a little more to the side….”_  
  
 _Erik._  
  
 _“Are you hoping to terrify me from combat in the future?” Charles murmurs, turning the side of his face more firmly into the pillow on which he’s lying. It’s not high quality—dreadfully scratchy, to be honest, which would suggest they’re still out in the field. Probably a medical tent._  
  
 _Erik snorts, though it’s half-hearted at best. But at least he’s catching the hint of joke that was meant to be. If Erik has a little humor left to give, then things can’t be completely dire. “No. But I_ am _looking for an explanation.”_  
  
 _Of course he is. The trick, though, is which one? Charles is hardly about to start handing out answers unless he knows exactly what Erik’s already discovered. It wouldn’t do to give Erik more answers than absolutely necessary, after all._  
  
 _“About what?” he asks, finally cracking open his eyes. He’s not surprised to find Erik seated beside him in a low canvas chair—collapsible and portable, as most everything is in the field—elbows resting on his knees and hands clasped in front of him._  
  
 _Erik looks exhausted. His hair is limp and barely brushed back, half of it hanging down over his forehead and covering one eyebrow. The dark circles beneath his eyes look punched on: more like black eyes than the result of sleep deprivation, and they’re made more prominent by the general pallor of his face. Even his eyes themselves are dulled, a muted green at the moment, and glassy, watery at the edges, rimmed in red._  
  
 _The wry smile that Erik gives more to the floor than to Charles is rather telling. “Still tight lipped, aren’t you? Don’t worry; I didn’t expect anything else.” Sighing, he leans forward a little and reaches out to tangle his fingers in the edges of Charles’ blanket, drawing it down the side of what is indeed, as Charles suspected, an army cot. The cold air rushes in over Charles’ exposed waist, and he shivers, but—something in Erik’s gaze stops him from tugging the blanket back from Erik._  
  
 _“The doctor had to strip you to clean your wound,” Erik informs him evenly. With a deadpan like that, he must have rehearsed this in his mind so many times that the emotion’s been ironed out of it. “The blood had soaked down into your clothes, and he thought it best to just cut everything off. Imagine his surprise when he took your underclothes off and found—“_  
  
 _Fuck._  
  
 _“Don’t.” It’s worse than pointless, closing his eyes when he can’t close his ears too, but... he doesn’t want to hear it. It’s not as though he doesn’t already know what’s going to be said._  
  
 _Erik sighs again and pulls the blanket back up to Charles’ shoulders. With his point made, there’s no reason to withhold the warmth any longer. “Your extreme reaction to what happened last night makes a good deal of sense now. And… honestly, I’m impressed that you’ve hidden this for so long.”_  
  
 _But not anymore. That’s implied in the statement. Erik thinks this is the end._  
  
 _More the fool him._  
  
 _“Promise me you won’t tell anyone.”_  
  
 _“Charles, it’s going to come out.”_  
  
 _No, it won’t—not if he plays his hand right. “I can’t—let me do it myself. Promise me you won’t be the one to tell.”_  
  
 _Erik runs a hand through his own hair, resignation rusting the movement and turning it jerky, lacking Erik’s usual smooth grace. His answer is clear before he ever speaks a word, though the verbalization comes anyway: “All right. I won’t be the one to tell._ You _will. But… no one will hear it from me first.”_  
  
 _Yes, perfect. And Charles—he won’t be telling, either. But Erik doesn’t need to know that yet. “Thank you,” he manages to choke out, leaning back into his pillow and staring up at the canvas ceiling. Unfortunately, the movement pulls at his side, and he winces, drawing a worried shift from Erik. “Where’s the doctor?” he asks slowly, running his tongue over his lower lip. His mouth is unbearably dry._  
  
 _Almost immediately, Erik positions a cup of water at his lips and a hand behind his head, levering him up enough—goodness, that hurts, burns like fire—so that he can gulp down the liquid. It’s too much at first, and he chokes, throat so dry that even the water sticks, but after a few tries it goes down. He drains the whole cup before waving Erik away and settling back down against the pillows, trying very hard not to acknowledge the now-throbbing wound in his side._  
  
 _“He had others to see,” Erik admits, returning to his perch on the chair. “The casualties weren’t bad, all things considered, but you know as well as I do that war always has its victims.”_  
  
 _Yes, and today Charles was one of them. It’s on both their minds. Why not just say it? But neither of them does._  
  
 _“And he left me here with you—?”_ Even though he knows what I am _hangs in the air unsaid, but they both hear it regardless._  
  
 _If not for the tension in every bit of Erik’s body, it would be easy to believe that Erik is more interested in his own hands than in anything to do with Charles: his gaze remains stubbornly fixed downward where he’s folded his fingers together, well away from Charles’ face._  
  
 _Erik takes so long in answering that it wouldn’t have been altogether surprising to find that he wasn’t planning to bother. But, just as Charles is on the verge of demanding answers again, Erik shifts, realigning himself in the chair, and finally levels his gaze up, settling it firmly on Charles’ face. “No better person to look after you than your mate.”_  
  
 _Has the cot dropped out from under him? No? It feels like it—like he’s just jolted downward, and his heart is somewhere underground. “You aren’t my mate,” he replies tonelessly, because—no. Just… no. It’s only the beginnings of a bond. It can be suppressed, and Charles can go back to the life he was living. Erik is not—not what a mate would be. Erik—it isn’t possible to see Erik as that sort of institutionalization. A wedding. A husband. A loss of freedom. It isn’t_ Erik. _Not Erik, who’s the first friend he’s had in years, who was a little like breathing again after holding his breath for a long time._  
  
 _But a denial was the wrong thing to say, apparently: Erik’s eyebrow arches quite impressively, visible now that he’s swept his hair out of his face. Though, it’s flopping forward again, despite looking surprisingly less tired, ostensibly rejuvenated along with its owner at the mention of this new topic._  
  
 _“No? So those weren’t the beginnings of a bond I felt last night? Pray tell, Charles,” he presses wryly, “what were they then?”_  
  
 _“It was just the beginnings—it can be suppressed. We can both go on living—“_  
  
 _Both Erik’s brows shoot straight for his hairline. “Go on living? Are you mad? This is—“ He rakes his hand through his hair again, more fervently this time, and with a slight shaking to his hand. “Charles, this is the best outcome I could have hoped for. What happened last night—you told me it couldn’t go on because of population laws—because neither of us could carry children, and the laws wouldn’t allow for two such people to be together. And you were right. But now—how can you ask me to suppress this?”_  
  
 _“No.” The word tastes sour, no doubt doused by his body to reek of horridness even if his mind is screaming that it’s the right answer._  
  
 _Erik leans back. “No?”_  
  
 _“That’s right.” And, more firmly this time: “No.”_  
  
 _The refusal wrings a huff out of Erik—half laugh, half scoff, and all disgust and disbelief—and he tips his head back to stare down at Charles disbelievingly. “No,” he repeats, trying the word on for size—and clearly not finding it agreeable. “If that’s your answer, I regret to inform you that, in the eyes of the law that you cited so ardently last night, you don’t have recourse to that answer. A bond has already been initiated—with your full participation, I might add—and no court in the land will allow you to suppress it.”_  
  
 _Charles takes in a deep breath._  
  
 _Erik’s mouth twitches. “Even Westchester wouldn’t see a bearer sit on its throne.”_  
  
 _In all the time Charles has known him, Erik hasn’t lied to him. But this—it’s different. Would he--? “You gave your word. Would you go back on it now?”_  
  
 _Erik frowns. “That the world wouldn’t hear from me what you are? No, Charles. But I wanted you before I knew that you were a bearer, and I won’t let you walk away now. You can’t—I—“ The air whistles out of his lungs, and he blinks, face twisting into a grimace. “I’m sorry. If there were another way—gods, the last thing I want to do is hurt you, but—I can’t lose you. I can’t. I won’t tell, but…” Another deep breath, and, this time, when he looks back over at Charles, Erik has settled himself into a state of calm. “I won’t need to tell: I suspect the reasons for that will become undeniably clear to the world after nine or so months. They’ll figure it all out on their own.”_  
  
 _Just like that. No discussion. Just the assumption that, if they were to fully bond, they’d have children right away. It’s not even that he doesn’t want children—he **does** want them—but the pressing in of society is an awful thing, and he’s grown up feeling that possibility from afar. To have engulf his reality now—he shrinks back away from it, seeking escape from the pen that’s suddenly sprung up. _  
  
_“No,” he says again. “I won’t—I won’t let you. Westchester needs me. There’s no heir, and I—I’m doing my best to do what’s right. No other kingdom is like Westchester. And I won’t throw that away for—for—“ For what? For the desire he feels? For a good, biologically satisfying tumble in the sack? A lifetime of that? Erik is… entirely difficult to walk away from, for so many reasons, not the least because he is Charles’ best friend. But Erik, no matter what his regard for Charles is, will not be so different from other husbands in what he demands. And a lifetime of stifling captivity isn’t worth satisfying the pull he feels._  
  
 _Is it? No. No, it can’t be. That’s selfish. That’s—it’s what he’s_ not _. He isn’t meant for this. And throwing away a chance to put things right in his region… “I won’t throw that chance away,” he repeats, but the following words come no easier than before: “Not for—for—“_  
  
 _“For me?” Erik finishes, jaw tightening. He looks away, shaking his head, though he turns back soon enough and fixes Charles with a long-suffering gaze. He’s prepared to wait this out. Gods, it’s obvious. Erik is no fool: he understands that there will be a healing period for the wound, with him at the bedside everyday, and biology won’t be so easily dissuaded—together that closely, they’ll deepen the bond, and if Charles can’t leave, the final bit of consummation will eventually follow. Time is on Erik’s side._  
  
 _As if to confirm the correctness of those thoughts, Erik shrugs and tells him, “You’ll feel differently in a few days. Maybe not about giving up your kingdom, but proximity has already proven to be your downfall—or would you like to attribute last night in the tent to something else entirely?”_  
  
 _Like to? Oh, yes, he would. Can he? No. He’d grown close to Erik, gravitated to him on many levels, and when Erik had pushed, he’d buckled under, as Erik says, the proximity—the constant grind of having to deny something that is fundamentally_ him _._  
  
 _“You can’t take my life away from me,” he snaps, rolling, trying to sit up—and, holy hell, that wound isn’t meant to be pulled._  
  
 _Instantly, Erik is at his side, pushing him back down and wiping his hair out of his face, murmuring to him through his sharp, pained breathing, and soothing until the paroxysms of pain have nearly faded and Charles is capable of thinking beyond them again._  
  
 _“Schatz,” he says gently, and Charles twitches a little in surprise and—dislike? “I don’t want to take your life from you. It will change, true, but we’ll be partners, in every sense of the word.”_  
  
 _“Partners,” he murmurs, breathing remaining slightly elevated, “implies that both parties have equal say in decisions. You’ve already proven you expect to be the final authority.”_  
  
 _One would think he’d slapped Erik, considering how quickly he pulls back, features wide and open and clearly surprised. “Well, yes. The final decision, certainly. But I’d always listen to you. I’d be a fool not to. I_ want _to.”_  
  
 _As if that’s enough. Charles turns his face away, concentrating on the scratch of the pillow against his cheek. “Thank you, but no. I’d rather have my kingdom where I can make a real difference.”_  
  
 _A hand sweeps down the side of his face. He doesn’t turn to it. He doesn’t even acknowledge it. “It’s not a choice, Charles.” ._  
  
 _It will_ always _be a choice. And he’s already made his. Now it only remains to plan when best to steal from this tent—a few days, at least, for the pain to settle. He’ll need to find Moira, and Armando will help him—Shawn and Alex too. His sister—he’d like to think she would help, but the way she hangs on Erik’s words, he can’t quite say for certain. Two days ago, he’d thought it beneficial for her to have a role model, especially one like Erik. But now—she’s never been particularly understanding of his decision to hide what he is, and with Erik’s influence…._  
  
 _He’d thought Erik would be good for her. Good, confident Erik, whom he trusted with his life. His best friend. True, he’d been disturbed by Erik’s anger, but there’s a treasure of good in him, and Raven could have learned so much from his positive qualities—_  
  
 _Is there anything he_ hasn’t _made a mistake with in the last few days?_  
  
 _“You’re tired, aren’t you?” Erik asks from a disconcertingly close distance. It may be Charles’ imagination, but the air seems to flutter, displaced by Erik’s breath._  
  
 _“Very,” he admits._  
  
 _Erik’s hand brushes down the side of his face again. “We’ve plenty of time to talk this over later.”_  
  
 _“Yes,” he agrees._  
  
 _But they don’t—because, two days later, when Charles drugs Erik’s drink with a sedative smuggled to him by Alex, and then escapes out of the camp with the help of Alex, Moira, Sean, and Armando, he and Erik still have not reached any sort of accord._  
  
 _And right up until Erik pulled the knife from Charles’ hands in his room at Westchester, Charles had been certain that they never would have the chance._  
  
When he slams back into his own mind once again, it’s to the tune of Emma’s analysis: _/I’d say your husband-to-be puts you to shame, Lehnsherr. He played you like a song./_  
  
Why won’t she be silent? Is she mad, poking at Erik more, pushing him to a place where he can absolutely rip Charles’ mind apart in a fit of rage? Emma’s too. Stupid, horrid. Really, really—  
  
Oh, gods, he can’t just shut Erik’s mind out, can’t—it’s like rolling over, blocking someone with his back, but he can’t move, and he can’t block, and he’s going to go absolutely _mad_.  
  
 _/Is that all that’s hidden?/_ Erik asks sharply, ignoring the comment in favor of—ah, apparently he’s noticed that Charles is about to go absolutely out of his mind—except he _can’t_ get out of his own mind, can’t get anyone else out either—can’t—  
  
 _/Yes./_  
  
 _/Then get the hell out./_  
  
And she does. Beautiful, merciful reality, thank whatever deity it is that he’s supposed to be worshipping, she _does_. Charles rides right out after her, turning himself inside out on the tail of her mental exit, flipping himself around until he’s back outside his own head, seeing outward rather than inward.  
  
Pity the view isn’t one that he much likes.  
  
Oh. He’s sobbing. How… embarrassing.  
  
Once he notices it, he clamps down on it, choking himself off in the middle of one the sobs. The sudden influx of air, shoved into the back of his throat, has him gagging, and just like that he goes from sobbing to coughing. Sounds like he’s tearing his own lungs out.  
  
“No, don’t curl up. Airways open, Charles—“  
  
A hand on his shoulder, pushing him back out of the fetal position he’s tried to curl into. The fingers bite down into his muscles, holding him steady, and even through the blur of tears—some from crying and some from coughing—he knows it’s Erik. It feels too much like someone cares—horribly, detrimentally—for it to be anyone else.  
  
When he finally begins to wind down, there’s a huff of air above him, and the hands relax. “There.” Never has one word sounded so relieved. “You’re all right.” It’s a statement—almost as if Erik is confirming it for himself: state it so that the rest of the world will recognize that it is so.  
  
How entirely insane that Erik thinks anything about this is all right.  
  
“Get the hell away from me,” Charles snaps, eyes still closed. He’s lying on his back—he can feel it, arms up at his sides, elbows bent and hands raised to about shoulder height, leaving him wide and open and splayed out in front of Erik. Will this be what it’s like when they go to bed for the first time? Him laid out for the taking? “You—you—“  
  
“I’m sorry,” Erik murmurs from above him, and he certainly sounds it, but the idea of opening his eyes to see for himself is overwhelming. “But you needed to see, and—“ He stops, biting off his own words. “It’s all over now, Charles. I’m sorry. I _am_ , Love, but I didn’t know what else to do. And it’s over.” Coaxing, like it matters what he promises. “Open your eyes. Please, Charles, it’s all right.”  
  
Is it? Well, maybe for Erik. Or maybe not—because Charles does as he’s told, and he celebrates the occasion by throwing a very accurate right hook straight at Erik’s face in the same moment that he decides to pull his eyelids open.  
  
The way the punch lands—solid, with a give in the flesh, but still a shock of pain up through his knuckle where he glances off Erik’s cheekbone—is about the most satisfying thing he’s ever felt. The pain in his own hand is perfect and real, and he’s already rearing back for another punch when Erik catches his wrist and slams it back down to the bed.  
  
“ _Mein Gott,_ Charles,” Erik gasps out, half of his face clenched up to minimize the pain. It gives him the look of someone who’s experiencing the effects of biting a lemon—but only on one side of his body.  
  
 _“_ You probably deserved that, Sugar,” Emma informs him from where she’s standing off to the side of the bed, hands languidly on her hips. She regards the whole situation with an expression of distaste coated in boredom. “If you didn’t have the beginnings of a bond with him, he’d likely be trying to turn your brain to pulp. I’d say you got off easy.”  
  
But while he’s started a bond with Erik? Emma doesn’t have the same protection. Does she think he blames this solely on Erik? No—a thousand times no. This was Emma too, perhaps more so, and more coldly.  
  
His mind lunges forward too quickly for Erik to realize, and Charles has her screaming on the floor, clutching her head before Erik can get a hold on him and pull him back. She’s lucky Erik manages to act as quickly as he does—she thinks that hurts _now_ , but a few more seconds and he could have turned her inside out and started dragging forward things she hoped never to see again. Childhood memories best left forgotten. Fears. Nightmares. The sensation of someone piercing into your brain and clamping down may be excruciating, but she’d do well to kiss Erik’s feet, because it’s nothing compared to what he could have done if Erik weren’t able to intervene.  
  
She reels back in obvious pain, pushing up to her feet, stumbling—how she manages to walk in those heels, he’ll never know—and catching herself on the bedpost. Her face pinches and she chokes out a breath, puffing out her lips as she fights to regain her composure. “You—“  
  
Whatever she’d meant to say, there’s no chance that it’s complimentary, but Erik cuts her off before she gets beyond the first word: “Leave,” he orders simply, fingers still digging into Charles’ wrists where he’s leaning over him, pressing Charles’ limbs down into the bed with his weight.  
  
Her cheeks flush an ugly, blotchy red. “He—“  
  
“If I deserved his fist in my face, you deserved whatever that was,” Erik snaps. At least he leans back a slight amount, letting the blood begin circulating through Charles’ wrists again. It’s difficult to feel it, though, as hard as he’s shaking. It might be from pain—his head is agonized by the sensation of a pulsing ache—or it could be shock, a disbelief that this has happened, that he’s—  
  
What _is_ he?  
  
“I only did what you asked!” Emma snarls, indignant. Still, she’s collecting herself, straightening her clothes as she pulls herself up to full height and glowers down at the both of them with a sneer.  
  
“Yes. Willingly, and with your own personal gain in mind. You’re no martyr.”  
  
That could very well be the first reasonable thing Erik has said since he walked into this room. Emma, of course, projects no such satisfaction with his reasoning: if anything, the sudden stoniness of her face speaks of an anger deeper than the flush on her cheeks. She opens her mouth to speak, likely to express that, but Erik easily cuts her off.  
  
“You have my thanks, Frost,” he says simply, shifting his weight again and chancing a glance at Charles before focusing his attention back on Emma. “You’ll have the compensation I promised you. But I’d still advise you to remain clear of Charles, especially if I’m not present.”  
  
Yes, thank you, and _Charles_ can damn well speak for himself. His lips are rubbery and his tongue is clumsy enough to suggest that it’s swelled a few sizes, but Erik has no right to be his spokesman—  
  
Except that he does. The law says he does.  
  
He’s… he has the right to be everything to Charles now.  
  
Bringing his breathing back under control is a colossal effort, and not one that he succeeds at. The pinching of his lungs, the hyper-awareness of them—it all combines and suffocates him, deteriorating into sharp, panicked little breaths that draw Erik’s attention, that have him uttering things—words, if those mean anything at all after the immediacy of mental contact—over him, but if they make any sort of sense, that’s lost in the air between them. Charles can’t hear him at all, not beyond a drone of white noise and a rushing in his ears as the world grays around him and his lungs squeeze him back into unconsciousness.  
  
He goes under to what he perceives to be the sound of his own sobs of relief.


	6. Chapter 6

Smell has always been the sense that caused Charles the most confusion, mainly on the basis of the difficulty he experiences with it in his mind. It is the sense most challenging to translate into telepathy, and while it is especially potent at evoking memories, a scent is hard to remember until it triggers those thoughts.  
  
But… once it does pull that trigger….  
  
“David,” he slurs drowsily, flopping his hand haphazardly out in the direction of the warm, babyish scent that tickles his nose. A small, gurgled cry responds, directly before his fingers brush flesh too smooth and perfect for it to be anything else but an infant.  
  
Opening his eyes, though—they’re so heavy, weighted down. “Here,” a voice murmurs, dragging his arm out a little wider… and then there is a warm weight settling against him, tucking into his side, and finally, with great effort, Charles manages to open his eyes.  
  
As sure as he’d been that the presence was David, he lets out a shaky breath of relief at the sight of his son nestled against him, cradled in the crook of his arm. “Hello, Love,” he whispers, blinking long and slow and simply drinking in the sight of the baby. “I’ve missed you.”  
  
 _And I wish I’d never had cause to see you again._  
  
If David is here, Westchester’s people are captured and many are likely dead. His last hope of having done anything truly good is now smothered. There’s joy at seeing his son, certainly, but he also can’t help closing his eyes and dropping his cheek back to the pillow. Smell, touch, and sound will suffice for now in knowing that his son is safe beside him.  
  
Somehow, he’s hardly surprised when the tips of two fingers drag tenderly over his brow. He wrinkles the skin under them, frowning, but not so drastically that it has much effect. “Don’t, Erik,” he mumbles, drawing his son a bit tighter out of instinct. And then, because he needs to know: “Are my people—?”  
  
“Most are alive. Detained. But you expected that.”  
  
Any sane man would. The fact that most are still alive is actually something of a surprise.  
  
Pulling his eyes back open, Charles turns in the direction of Erik’s voice. It’s become a theme in these last few days to find Erik sitting at his bedside; it’s hardly novel to find him there now, elbows resting on the bed, far too close to David for Charles’ comfort. Erik, being exposed to David, raising him—no. It can’t be allowed.  
  
Half out of spite, and entirely to make a point, he slips a hand under David’s head, and, sloppily, with considerable effort, lifts his son across his body and nestles him on his other side, barricading his body between David and Erik. The tightness in his chest—had he woken with that, or was it recent?—eases, and he lets out a wispy sigh.  
  
Erik frowns. “He’s been in my charge for the hours you’ve been asleep, Charles. If I’d wished him harm, don’t you think I’d have done it by now?”  
  
“I couldn’t very well say. We were together for months on end before you hurt _me_.”  
  
Low blow—and it’s reflected in Erik’s face, under the—oh, dear—significant bruising coloring his cheekbone. That hit found its mark better than he’d had hoped. Apologize? It’s on the tip of his tongue, blocking up all other words, but the prospect of apologizing to Erik for what was well-deserved, if cruel, frays his nerves.  
  
Instead of protesting that point as the wrinkle spanning his forehead declares that he’d like to, Erik merely draws his hand back toward himself and, folding it with his other in his lap, gazes down at Charles unabashedly. “You’ll be leaving for Genosha tomorrow.”  
  
What? The wording—it’s… _wrong_. “Me,” he says, careful, very measured. “Not ‘us.’”  
  
“There’s still the Upper North and Boston, though, as I’m sure you probably suspected, Boston is half taken already. At the moment, we’ve got soldiers on the ground and have established a perimeter, but there are still factions holding out. It shouldn’t take long.”  
  
But… Erik already has Westchester. Isn’t that enough? Somehow, he’d thought that, once—if—Erik took Westchester, that would be the end of things. He’d stop. The nights in the field, the blood, the constant state of alert—Erik never took particular enjoyment in them before. Why begin now? If this were a part of Erik, it must have been entangled deep within a sense of duty and a dose of pragmatism. Except… Erik had always intended to see what’s left of the world united under a banner of mutant supremacy.  
  
To leave two lands free, to fight him—any strategist would know all too well that he’d never have a moments peace. So, pragmatism in the bloodiest sense.  
  
Also, feigned confusion as the antithesis of that sense: “Pillaging my kingdom wasn’t enough?”  
  
Erik chooses to ignore him. Unfortunately, that doesn’t extend to other matters, and after the passing of a few seconds, he levers himself up and out of the chair, settling himself on the edge of the bed instead, and—  
  
No. Absolutely not. He will not touch David. He will not, he will _not—_  
  
But he does. He simply reaches over Charles and plucks him up, cradling him in the crook of his right arm. The bit of the blanket that has unraveled from where it was tucked about David’s body spills down over his arm and brushes against Charles’ instead. “No—“  
  
His plea doesn’t fall entirely on deaf ears: Erik leans over enough so that Charles can peer at his son, despite his position—flat on his back and with a core so leaden that he has little hope of moving. Erik must have given him a sedative, prompted by that feeble excuse about catching up on sleep, or maybe his own hysteria—and why not? If Erik is making decisions for him now, what’s one more? And if recent experience is anything to go by, Erik _will_ do as he sees best.  
  
“I won’t let you settle in around him, away from me,” Erik says, stroking a hand down the baby’s face. David blurts out a cry, but it doesn’t sound particularly unhappy—merely curious, and perhaps irritated, which is understandable, considering that he’s swaddled up tightly. “We’re going to be a family.”  
  
Family. Such a complicated concept for Erik, though it’s not as though Charles is an expert. A normal childhood was never attainable, and, really, what a laughable concept. An alcoholic mother, a dead father, a stepfather who wanted his throne, and they all lied for him—gods know why. But—he’s a functioning adult, adjusted without bloodshed for therapy, whereas Erik….  
  
Erik is working out his issues by taking a mate, with a child as a package deal—a little family all his own to protect like he hadn’t been able to protect his parents when he’d been a child. Thinking that a child could or ever should carry the guilt for a parent’s death is absurd, but there were more than a few times when Erik’s nightmares leaked into Charles’ mind. Sometimes, when he’s tangled in his terror, Erik’s mind burns itself down to a rabbit-quick pulse, a mantra of _protect, protect, protect_ , underlined by the grief of having failed before _._  
  
If it were only that—the need to protect—it might be endurable. But it’s not—it’s _never_ just that, and it never could be. What Erik is feeling—every moment that it infuses the rooms they share, it screams _real_. His affection is genuine, not simply born of the desire to have a family. That’s a manifestation of what he wants, yes, but—it’s more than that. More like love. Erik does—he honestly does truly _love_ him, doesn’t he? This—all of it, this whole mess—is underwritten with the most powerful emotion possible.  
  
Splendid. If that’s what Erik feels, then what he’s doing—it will be exponentially as powerful as it would have been if Erik had been trying to force any random person into playing house with him. That isn’t it. Not at all. The role is simply being built around the person he truly wanted.  
  
The knowledge has Charles rolling over as best he can, scratching at Erik’s arms and fighting to pull his child back toward him. Erik is already attached to David, to Charles too, and if this goes further—  
  
“I’m sorry you had to feel those memories,” Erik says, catching Charles with his free arm and settling him against his side. Charles’ squirming appears to trouble him no more than as a minor nuisance, easily combated by pulling him in until Charles can maneuver his arms under Erik’s and around David as well. “I’m sorry for the method used to retrieve them. But I think you understand why you needed to know.”  
  
From Erik’s perspective, yes, it was necessary knowledge. But Erik’s perspective is _warped_. “It doesn’t make a difference.”  
  
Lie that it is— _is_ it a lie?—he hadn’t thought he was so obvious in telling it, but Erik’s low chuckle—little more than vibrations in his chest—says otherwise. “I’m sure it does—and that it will, the more you think about it. You helped initiate this bond, Charles.”  
  
“I didn’t mean—“  
  
“No. You didn’t. But you _wanted_. For a little under a minute, you let biology and desire rule duty, and doesn’t that show you just how powerful your natural inclinations are?”  
  
It was never a question of them being powerful. All his life he’s been pushing them under and smothering them, only to have them burst back up. No one knows better than he does how powerful biology and desire are.  
  
When Erik leans down and brushes a kiss to his hair, a burning ache kindles behind his eyes, roaring up into pressure that threatens to burst at a moment’s notice. And when David wiggles, it sends Charles’ stomach flipping, worse than a pancake at the mercy of the new girls in the kitchen. His heart is squeezing—damn thing must be permanently connected to his tear ducts: he can feel his eyes moistening, worse with every flash of memory and the knowledge that he has entirely, irrevocably failed himself, his wife, his son, and his people.  
  
Might as well let Erik settle in between his knees after all. He certainly hasn’t been much good for anything else.  
  
“If you let biology have its way, Charles, I’ll pardon your people.”  
  
Oh. _Oh_.  
  
As far as offers go, it’s quite generous—and it’s also inexplicably cruel. Erik must know that all he has left is his own resistance, and to take that away—to be asked to lie quietly, to act a part he can’t stomach—but Erik _would_ need him to do that. He’ll have a very difficult time garnering an ounce of respect if his own spouse attempts to do him harm. A truly amusing thought—trying to put his fist in Erik’s face every night from now on, when Erik climbs up over him, kisses him—  
  
Do not sob. Do not. Not because the image is terrifying, and not because it is arousing.  
  
Someone—anything—no one is going to help him—but he is split right down the middle.  
  
And now he’s laughing. Mad—Erik will have to lock him away and let him alone like this, let him—  
  
The noise—or perhaps Charles’ thoughts and feelings—trigger something in David, and while it starts out as a quiet sniffling, it quickly deteriorates into full-fledged squalls. How very much he’d like to squall along with his son, but—no, David needs him, and that pulls him back, grounds him, until he can roll over and nuzzle in against that downy hair, hushing and soothing until David’s cries taper out, and Erik’s own hitched breathing grows louder, a constant reminder in Charles’ mind.  
  
“I’m sorry, Love,” Charles whispers, stroking a hand over his son’s head, dragging fingertips through the soft tufts there—brown hair, could be from either himself or Moira. He clamps down on his muscles so viciously—he will not shake—that his fingers curl up and cramp. “Daddy’s all right now, yes?”  
  
“You’re shaking awfully hard for someone who’s all right,” Erik murmurs from beside him. A gentle kiss is pressed to his hair, and, in this moment—never before has he felt so cherished, so cosseted, as now, when Erik pushes up and over him, framing Charles’ hips with his hands and pulling him down the bed, baby and all. He lets himself go, sheets sliding under him and bunching, pulling tight in other places. If Erik notices, he chooses to ignore it, content to arrange Charles where he wants him and then back away, sliding up toward the headboard and settling there, crossing his legs and cradling Charles’ head down into his lap.  
  
Clever of him, really: there will be no fighting while the baby is on Charles’ chest, held tightly against him. Even if he were inclined, Erik’s fingers are stroking through his hair, separating the strands out and tugging them between his fingers, carding and carding until the knots untangle and Charles eases despite himself, shuddering and shaking but still turning his face into the meat of Erik’s leg and breathing in the hint of sweat and metal that lingers on the skin. The scent is familiar and comforting and altogether a memory, caught up in life in a tent and in Erik’s continual presence as they’d sought Shaw.  
  
“I need to hear you say it, Charles. Will you buy your people a pardon?”  
  
Why not? Bargaining with his body makes him no more of a whore than any bearer before him, and that’s not prostitution—it’s necessity. A very classy kind, too. Better than those non-bearers—usually those women who can’t have children—down on their knees behind buildings, in the dirt, with disease and hate. He’ll have silk sheets and love, and all the affection he can handle, if he’ll allow Erik the liberty of giving it. One of them will have liberty, at least—not him, but Erik will—and Charles will have some say behind closed doors, though pretty in public, and very, very tame.  
  
He chokes down bile and shivers a little more.  
  
This was always what he was running from, isn’t it? He’s met it face-to-face at last.  
  
Raven would be happy. Somewhere, she probably is—she won’t have left Erik. He could ask. At some point he will, but not at _this_ point, when Erik is waiting for his answer, and he has to give it—can’t think—can’t—  
  
“Will you force me if I say no?”  
  
 _And will you force me in different ways if I say yes?_  
  
Gods, what a question. But… it’s a valid question, though an emotionally bloody one.  
  
Erik’s hand goes still in his hair, and when it moves again after a few seconds, it’s to press the edges of his nails down into Charles’ scalp. Probably not a conscious move, but shock will do that to anyone, Erik included.  
  
“In order to fully activate the bond, it has to happen, Charles. You know that.”  
  
Yes, then. Erik would. He’d hold him down—gently, no doubt, with kisses and apologies and caresses, and—  
  
But he’s already done that. He’s held him and gone into his mind, pulling out ideas of complicity in their bond that had been buried for good reason.  
  
Of course Erik would do it again.  
  
He even has a right to, according to law. Rape—the word doesn’t apply in that case. Once, hundreds of years ago, it might have, but, after so many hours with dusty history tomes, Charles can safely say that what rape was three hundred or so years ago—it isn’t the same now. In a bond, sex happens. And if it’s forced, then it is, though it never should be, because refusal shouldn’t occur. Taking someone else’s spouse— _that_ is rape. Taking a non-bearer without their consent— _that_ is rape. But if a bearer refuses his spouse sex, and the spouse is disinclined to oblige him—that’s simply marriage.  
  
And the aspect of the mind? Erik’s potential control of his telepathy? Justified. He shivers again, biting down to stop his teeth from chattering. Erik can do with him as he likes, and the only sort of power Charles is going to have is that which he can maneuver and manipulate within the confines of consent. He takes in a deep breath at the thought. His telepathy, controlled by Erik—but it will be controlled in exactly that manner _either way_ , regardless of whether or not he consents. He only has the power to choose how the control will be given over.  
  
Better to bargain freely with what will only be taken forcibly if he refuses to bargain at all.  
  
“Yes, then,” he says dully, not picking his head up off of Erik’s thigh. _Fool_ his mind screams, to like this closeness, when this is the man who is telling him he’ll hold him down and—  
  
“I wouldn’t hurt you, you know that—“  
  
Ah. Erik thinks they’re only discussing the eventual results of withheld permission. He doesn’t realize that _is_ meant to be the permission.  
  
“No.” Still dull. Probably that’s why Erik misunderstood. “I mean that, yes, I’ll let you fuck me if you give my nation a pardon.”  
  
Crude. But accurate. And efficiency has its uses. With any luck, that’s the kind of view Erik will take when they finally get to bed, because—enjoying it would be _terrible_. It would be better if it hurt: pleasure would only turn to guilt, and feeling good would spark that desire that’s always a slow burn around Erik—make him complicit in his own imprisonment.  
  
Not that he hasn’t been already, being stupid enough to participate in that kiss….  
  
Taking a deep breath, he rubs a hand down David’s back. The baby is silent, likely attuned to his father’s distress. What will they do when he gets old enough to ask questions? When he feels this grief and helplessness and knows to ask about it?  
  
Or perhaps he’ll know _not_ to ask.  
  
“Charles…” Hesitant, and worried. “Please don’t look at it like that. We’re a good team—even you have to admit that.” He doesn’t _have_ to admit anything, regardless of whether it’s true. “Why can’t we be that again?”  
  
Why? Because Erik will rule his mind, use it to harm others, use it—  
  
The why is so obvious that asking is an insult.  
  
“How did you feel when Shaw killed your mother, Erik? How did you feel when Shaw helped that group of religious fanatics round up you and those like you, just because you still held to certain practices of an Old World religion?”  
  
“You can’t tell me I’m like him—“  
  
He goes to close his eyes, only to realize that they’re already closed. And Erik has taken to stroking his hair again, in broad sweeps this time, very affectionate, every touch declaring just how much of a treasure he thinks Charles is. How nice of him—if not for the underlying steel.  
  
“I can tell you anything I want,” he murmurs tonelessly. “And if you try and stop me—didn’t you say you’d always listen?”  
  
A pause, and then… “Yes. I did.”  
  
“Will you?”  
  
Another pause. But: “Yes.”  
  
“Then you ought to understand that what you felt then—hating the person who made you powerless—“ Erik makes a small noise of protest, “—who took everything away, who killed the person you loved most in the world—can you understand what you’ve done to me?”  
  
Silence.  
  
And to think, Charles had hopes that reasoning might do some sort of good. Foolish, yes, but desperate, and there’s nothing left to lose by trying.  
  
When he finally manages to speak again, Erik is colder, his voice choked tighter in his throat: “You lied about what you were from the beginning, Charles. Your parents even lied for you. This wouldn’t have happened if you hadn’t hidden what you are—“  
  
As if it’s that simple. As if Erik is absolved from guilt on that basis alone. “And you, of course, are only doing what’s right,” he counters wearily. “I don’t think you understand, and I don’t think you want to. Now… get off me, and just--”  
  
A gentle warning pull on his scalp confirms that Erik has curled a lock of his hair around his finger. “I’m not a fool: I know very well that this is miserable for you. But… doesn’t it help at all that it’s _me_? You wanted—I _know_ you wanted—“ Erik trails off, and his fingers loosen, rubbing little circles in at the root of the hair in an unspoken apology.  
  
“Wanted _you_? Yes.” No point in lying now. Erik could pull it from his mind if he had the desire to do so. “But not the life that goes along with you.” And… maybe not even Erik, now that he’s shown what he’s capable of doing.  
  
 _Lies_ something in him hisses. Erik is… Erik, and that is worth having, worth saving, though the best of him is pitiably ill-spent in this case. Erik could be more, and the man Charles is getting is not the Erik he spent a campaign alongside. No laughing eyes and wry humor, comfortable companionship and protection, equally—  
  
Equal. Does Erik still see him as an equal in any way? Or has he been relegated to spouse, to lesser, something to be petted and spoiled and doted on, but not a brother-in-arms in any sense anymore?  
  
Apparently bolstered by any sort of admission that Charles wants him, Erik leans down over him, nosing gently into his hair in a mesh of kisses and murmured words. The words aren’t worth catching for anything more than how they tickle his hair and smooth over his forehead once Erik trails down that far, pressing his lips to the skin he finds there. “We want the same things, Charles,” he whispers against the skin.  
  
What a lovely, incorrect thought. If it were true— _if_ it were true, the world would be worse of than it is now. “I’m sorry, but we do not.”  
  
“Of course we do. You want mutants to escape discrimination as much as I do. You—“  
  
“And I want the same for humans too.”  
  
A pause: Erik breathes, and Charles squints, waiting, and—simply waiting. The movement of the air tickles at his face. “They’d kill us all if they had the chance,” Erik says finally. “But if their lives are what you want, Charles… we’ll find a way for them to live comfortably.”  
  
Comfortably. Not equally. But... not dead, and considering how Erik believes humans are a threat, that’s a significant concession. Not perfect, but… a start.  
  
This will be his life now. Little steps.  
  
But… if he can beat Erik in chess, surely he can play him in this.  
  
A game is, though, no easy matter, and Erik has always been a clever opponent: in chess, he has an ability to execute unconventional moves that Charles has never seen paralleled. Erik is not a classically good player: he’s rash, a bit sloppy, and sometimes he unwisely sacrifices his pieces when a bit of patience might serve him better. But every time his fingers reached out to brush a piece, skimming it along the boxes of the board, Charles always finds himself holding his breath, sure he’s watching a battle rather than a game. Every move of Erik’s is a surprise, born from the fact that he constantly walks the edge of careless play and brilliant creativity.  
  
With that in mind, the best he can do is to try to pin Erik down right from the start. As a man who keeps his promises, Erik will play by any rules he agrees to set for himself—even if they’re agreed upon for reasons not wholly logical.  
  
If he can bully Erik into agreeing, simply as a concession to _him_ ….  
  
“I want your word,” Charles says fiercely, slamming a hand upward and catching Erik’s forehead hard enough to push it away and shove Erik to the side. “Promise me you won’t kill humans simply because of what they are.”  
  
Erik is all harsh good looks and confusion at such a behest, and, in retrospect, pushing him away was counterproductive, though fixing it is worse: the soft slide of skin on skin when Charles reaches up and curls his fingers around Erik’s wrist, holding David solidly with his other hand. “ _Please_ , Erik.”  
  
Good. Bring Erik down with him, caught in that maelstrom of affection and possession that a plea ought to invoke.  
  
Still, may the gods strike him dead if he ever again sounds so pathetic. He’s _begging._ Really, truly doing it. There’s no missing the strained cadence of his tone, how it drags on the first word, stretching out long and sharp, meant to stab into Erik’s heart and pull out the wanted reaction. This is the kind of begging that he’d sworn he’d never do. This is what he fought a war to avoid.  
  
And this is what he has been reduced to being.  
  
“I don’t promise you’ll like my alternative solutions,” Erik tells him, though he’s more focused on Charles’ touch, and on tracing his own finger over Charles’ fingers, wringed as they are around Erik’s wrist. “But, yes, I give you my word that I’ll spare their lives whenever possible. But, Charles? I won’t allow them to persecute our people any longer. We both know they’ll battle their own extinction, and, if that happens—if a human moves to harm mutants—I make no promises.”  
  
“You’re pushing them to—“  
  
“I’m pushing them to nothing. They were bent on killing those different from them far before I came along.”  
  
“Mutants are just as prone to fighting what they don’t understand—”  
  
“Maybe so. But they _are_ superior genetically. And they also happen to be my own people. I can’t—and won’t—fight for everyone. Those like me—like must protect like.”  
  
Tipping his head back, Charles meets Erik’s eyes. If he could talk a little longer, make a better argument—but, no. Those eyes, bright and fervent as they are—there is no negotiation inherent in them. Erik is a very broken man, fighting on the basis of his past—on a determination to protect those like him—and that gaze is so obviously derived from that: it’s fervor, desperation, and the desire to do good, and it’s gone so terribly, terribly wrong, ending in a swirl of green and bits of blue ringing a dot of black.  
  
“Genosha, then,” Charles says quietly, looking away and back down to his son. The baby has dropped drowsily into a doze on Charles’ chest, tiny mouth hanging open, red lips wet with spit. Already, he’s learned to sleep with his miniature fists curled up, ready to spring awake—and, that’s absurd, all babies sleep with their fists slightly curled. He’s only projecting his own fears onto his son. David is fine. Normal, even. And certainly happier than his father. “You think the court will welcome me? You’ve made no secret of what—who—you meant to find in Westchester, and there are those who blame me for this war.”  
  
“They’ll hold their tongues.”  
  
If only confidence equated to reality. “Leave Boston and the Upper North. You don’t need them.”  
  
“It isn’t a matter of _my_ need. I swore I’d see the land united. And I will.”  
  
Unity is easy when everyone is dead. No division in that. A grave is a grave is a grave—death does not descriminate.  
  
“Raven is there. In Genosha.”  
  
For the love of—  
  
Raven.  
  
Gods, if the situation could be worse—it _is_ worse. Warped and bitter and _worse_. Raven is his sister, and he will always love her, but Moira had been so pale with that knife in her shoulder, and her voice had deteriorated into soft syllables and dull intonation the closer she got to death, the more her cheeks hollowed out into cavernous dips, eyes dimming. At the end, her body had been wasted.  
  
Love for his sister does not preclude hate and hurt, and if he sees her, he will—will—  
  
He drags a laugh from his throat, sending a few scraps of unease and distaste along with it. The combination roles off his tongue surprisingly easily, and with too great a speed—it strikes Erik head on, causing him to jerk back, all except his hand, which drops its fingers to Charles’ arm, smoothing down the smattering of downy hair that wisps along the flesh.  
  
“You won’t need to meet her until I return. But we’ll be married shortly after I’m back, Charles. I hope you’ll plan.”  
  
To send Erik to hell? Certainly. Anything else? A _wedding_? No.  
  
“Is that your way of kindly telling me that she’ll be present at the farce you want to call a wedding?”  
  
Erik sighs. “I assume that’s ‘no’ to the planning, then.”  
  
“Quite right.”  
  
Considering the number of times he’s already rebuffed Erik, that is likely not what prompts Erik to get his arms under him and push up off the bed. He spares one more look for Charles as he swings his feet around to the side, planting them firmly on the ground and reaching out, brushing the back of his knuckles down Charles’ cheek.  
  
That would be all right. Tolerable, even. But when Erik turns to David, gliding his hand down toward the baby—  
  
“Don’t.” One word, but Charles has been hunting before, and he knows what an animal sounds like when protecting its offspring. He’s not so very far off from that.  
  
The words function better than a blow, and Erik pulls up short, muscles rippling and coiling under his skin, drawing him in and holding him steady. “He’ll be raised as my son too, Charles,” he says quietly after a few moments of silence. His eyes follow Charles’ movements when he sets David on the other side of himself, away from Erik.  
  
Odd, how distant Erik sounds, as if he’d hoped—no matter what he’d hoped, really. He must have known Charles wouldn’t eagerly allow him the role of parent. And when he lies down with Erik, if there’s a baby—it doesn’t bear thinking about, so soon. But… a baby that Erik has a right to, by virtue of blood—a little piece of himself.  
  
Charles shivers, all the warmth flowing out of him and into the heated glare that he offers to Erik.  
  
“He’s _my_ son. Mine and Moira’s.”  
  
For the space of a few seconds, Erik’s forehead ripples, twitching, and it’s absurdly easy to imagine that his face might contort, a whole new visage bubbling up to take over his current one. But he pulls the muscles back under control quickly, and Charles is left facing a stony countenance. “The only reason,” Erik says slowly, each word pointed and—no other word for it— _ominous_ , “that I don’t intend to have your marriage to her declared illegitimate is because it would label David legally a bastard. And bastards can’t inherit kingdoms.”  
  
Anyone with nerves could testify that the temperature in the room has suddenly dropped. “Are you threatening me?” Charles asks slowly, and when he looks down, his hands have come to cup David’s little shoulders.  
  
Protective to the end.  
  
“No. But you need to forget her.”  
  
“I love her.”  
  
It’s nearly a convulsion, that twisting of skin at his mouth, but, like before, Erik pushes everything back down, buried under that stoniness. “You love _me_ too. And you loved me first.”  
  
“Right now, Erik, I _hate_ you.” It might even be part of the truth.  
  
“As if that ever precluded love.” He smiles, bearing his teeth back into an expression approaching a grimace. Close enough, at least.  
  
“Oh? And do you hate _me_?”  
  
Definitely a grimace now. “Charles, I fought a war for you, because you refused to be what you are. I watched you marry a woman and have a child, all while I was wading through the blood and bodies of men whom you allowed to act as living shields between you and me, in denial of a bond that had already happened. You were _mine_ every moment that you were with Moira, and if you think I don’t hate you for orchestrating that period of time, then you are not as intelligent as I give you credit for.”  
  
If he could get up out of this bed, he might be more equipped to combat such a frankly insulting piece of accusation. Whatever Erik gave him, though—it’s a great effort just to wrench himself upward, propping his back up against the headboard where his sweaty skin sticks to the wood and smears out of place, hot and tacky. “I am not a piece of property—“  
  
“In the eyes of the law you are. Not in my eyes—but I doubt you’ll find my point of view much more agreeable. It isn’t any less proprietary. Only less… objectifying, I suppose. You’re mine, but—” He swallows heavily, and the soft glow of want settles into his eyes, bleeding out into his features and softening them. “You rule _me_ in every way that matters, Charles.”  
  
“Every way that matters to _you_. Not to me. If that were the case—“  
  
“You’d walk away. I know.”  
  
In a perfect world, before Moira, he might not have left. Where—where did that thought come from? If there’s anything he shouldn’t consider when faced with Erik’s entreaties—if he can’t keep his own self under control—if he’s back in a tent on a battlefield, playing chess with a smile for every day of his life—  
  
Erik was something that he wanted. But Charles—of _course_ he’d left before either of them could finish the game, because… no matter who won—if either of them had gotten what he most wanted—they would still be kissing in that tent. An outside world that demands Charles hand over everything else that he values, things that could change the lives of so many others beyond himself for the better—in exchange for that one thing—it was the end of everything good between them.  
  
And it was the truth: only independent of the real world could he ever have Erik.  
  
Circumstances broke every other chance.  
  
“Yes. I’d leave.”  
  
Because where else can they live, but in the world?  
  
“No longer an option.”  
  
“And when I hate you?”  
  
“You won’t.” And Erik really does believe that, doesn’t he? His lifted jaw, set firmly and at the risk of breaking teeth from grinding; the sharp flash of his eyes; the utter, inexorable tension in the lines of his arms—none of it offers room for hesitancy or uncertainty. “You love—“  
  
“And when I _only_ hate you?”  
  
Again, more firmly, almost an order: “You won’t. You think of everything you’re losing, Charles, but I’ll make it up to you. I’ll give you better than what you had before, and you won’t have to deny what you are for it, either. At least consider that.”  
  
As pleas go, it’s not a bad one. Almost entrancing, when spoken so low and honestly—Erik honest-to-god believes it, no doubt—with so much passion behind it. Too much passion—enough to prompt Erik forward, too quickly—it’s _startling_ —with a hand out, and then… not out, but working its way where it shouldn’t be. Fingers slide up under the hem of Charles’ shirt, brushing skin with all the reverence of a worshipper—but Charles is no deity, entangled as he is in the bubbles of color in Erik’s eyes—green and blue—and if he _is_ playing the role of omnipotent being, then it’s anyone’s guess what Erik is, to pull him in like this.  
  
“You’re fighting your own nature,” Erik breathes out, sinking down against him, palm spreading flat on Charles’ stomach, pushing down a fraction too firmly and pulling a grunt from Charles. Instantly, the touch softens, rubbing contritely over the flesh under it, offering apology. “Charles, you are _stunning—“_  
  
No, he’s not. He’s defeated and tired and grieving. If Erik could see that—if he weren’t so cruel as to push this, when it’s wrong, entirely wrong—soft, prying lips and hate, hate, hate that he, Charles, cannot—if Erik knew—if he—if—  
  
“Oh, Love,” Erik whispers against his mouth, hot and slick, barely taking the time to part their mouths. “If it’s a kingdom you want, you’ll have—“  
  
“No.” Still lips to lips, mere inches apart. “ _My_ kingdom—Westches—“  
  
Which David will inherit, and—  
  
Bloody hell.  
  
David.  
  
Charles shoves Erik with such force that the other man stumbles back, saved from falling to the floor only by his grip on Charles’ blanket. As it is, he hangs half off the bed. And, really, it’s a stroke of luck that Charles isn’t wrapped in the blanket: if he were, he would have tumbled off the bed with it, caught up in Erik’s hold.  
  
“My _son—“_  
  
Erik, thankfully, understands fairly quickly, eyes widening at the realization that, yes, they’ve been kissing that deeply while an infant is cradled at Charles’ side. Hardly the picture of propriety.  
  
“I’m sorry,” he says, voice nearly toneless, if not for the undercurrent of shock. “We’ll— _Mein Gott_ —“ He runs a hand through his hair, front to back and then reverse. “I—“ Wordless is a good look on him, though sprawled on the floor is not, and he must realize it: he reaches out and grips the edge of the mattress, yanking himself back upright.  
  
Survival instincts are an interesting concept: a person will always feel better—more confident—on his feet. Fight or flight—both are better served by standing, or so it would seem. A fact like that would go a long way in explaining why, once he’s gained his feet, Erik swells back up to his full height with a degree of confidence that had been momentarily knocked out of him when he’d fallen off the bed. “My fault,” he says, placating. He shouldn’t look so soft in the face—so honestly repentant—but he’s all smooth lines and no tension, the sort of face that earns a kiss in the morning from a bed partner, before the stress of the day seeps in and ruins it all.  
  
An apology is enough to have Charles pushing back against the pillows, curling his toes down into the mattress just to shove his tension _somewhere_. But the sight of Erik drifting his hand across the sheets to touch the back of David’s head, twinning through the light brown hair he finds there sets his teeth on edge, so tightly that—he’s going to break a tooth, trying to figure whether this is anger or something appallingly right.  
  
Erik and love. Hate. His son and Erik. And what he, Charles, feels for Erik—no matter what that feeling is—what _is_ it?—to see it near his son—  
  
“I’ll see you off in the morning, all right?”  
  
How nice of him to ask. Now he ought to apply that principle to the invasion of personal space. As close as Erik is right now, it would be entirely helpful— _oh_. He’s hoping for—does he _really_ think…?  
  
But, yes, he does, speaking scarcely a foot from Charles’ face, bent over him with arms on either side, hemming in both him and David. His hesitance is rather confusing, if one doesn’t consider that it’s not a deep kiss he wants, but only one that he doesn’t initiate.  
  
Leaning up, pressing his lips to Erik’s—he can’t possibly be so stupid as to implicitly give Erik permission. But he’s already done that. Kissing him, that is. It’s why he’s in this mess.  
  
Knowing, though, that it’s what Erik wants, why he’s hovering so close—  
  
After all that has happened in the last few minutes, Erik still thinks—of course he does. His arms quiver almost imperceptibly with the effort of holding himself up and keeping perfectly motionless, but he shows no signs of easing back in the near future, content instead to wait. Let it never be said that Erik Lehnsherr is unwilling to wait for what he wants. The man has the perseverance of someone not accustomed to the concept of ultimate failure.  
  
In it’s own way, it’s admirable. Or it would be, if Charles could breathe through the full onslaught of that perseverance: his lungs are strangely tight, which is unfortunate, and very unhelpful when he thinks on it, serving as that does to only heighten the sensation. _Don’t_ think about it, then—damn it all, as if he can turn his mind to something else _now_ when his muscles have turned traitor and are squeezing the life out of his lungs.  
  
Erik blinks slowly. Drug addicts have looked more alert than he does at this moment, eyes blown wide and just blinking and blinking and blinking. “I can feel you breathe,” he murmurs, and the air—it puffs out over Charles’ lips, tripping all the senses on his nerves and skittering the sensation down his back.  
  
Erik smiles. “You ought to keep that up until tomorrow—breathing, that is.”  
  
“Thank you.” He means to toss it out angrily—definitely caustically—but it comes out half-hearted.  
  
Erik sighs, nodding at his words—whether he’s offering the pleasantry sarcastically or in earnest, he appears thankful for the change of subject.  
  
Either way, the subject is changed. Small miracles do, apparently, still exist.  
  
“Good night, Charles.” Worse than an inchworm, Erik is, tipping forward so sluggishly that Charles could swear winter has almost set in by the time Erik presses his lips to his forehead.  
  
When Erik draws back, he’s wearing a little half-smile. Nothing appears to have the power to move it—not Charles’ scowl, and not the way he gathers David a little closer, waiting until Erik has risen and moved to the door.  
  
“You can’t just pack me off back to Genosha!“ he calls after Erik.  
  
Erik doesn’t pause as he opens the door. He shoots Charles one last small smile, the right side of his mouth quirked up, pulling his cheek tight, before he slips out the door, closing it behind him.  
  
Charles is left, mouth open, intending to protest, to call him back, to—but he wants him to leave.  
  
Doesn’t he?  
  
Damn biology to hell: he leans back into his pillows, pulling his son against him, and—and—  
  
Maybe he’ll just sleep for now.


	7. Chapter 7

_“Did you ever think you’d be doing this?”_  
  
 _Seems a shame to break the silence, when they normally have so little of it, surrounded as they are by a camp of soldiers. Common sense says they ought not to have sneaked away in the first place: leaving the soldiers unattended is always a risk, and there is no doubt a contingency of them that, like the teenagers some of them actually are, will end up drinking themselves under the table—but regret is slim in the face of a stunning night sky and good company._  
  
 _At the question, Erik huffs, rolling his head toward Charles and brushing his cheek along the ground, catching a blade of grass in his hair. It’s second nature to pluck it from Erik’s head and toss it away, grinning in Erik’s general direction and very determinedly ignoring how that tuft of hair had felt under the pads of his fingers._  
  
 _“Doing what?” Erik asks. He shifts to the side, tugging at the bit of blanket under his back and sliding it out from under him. Once he has it free and in his fist, he’s able to toss the end of it over Charles, wrapping him up under the wool. “It’s cold,” he says by way of explanation at Charles’ put-upon expression. “I need you in one piece for the campaign.”_  
  
 _“The point of stargazing, Erik, is to do it at_ night _. Of course it’s chilly. And I’m fine. Don’t fuss.”_  
  
 _Easier to tell those stars not to shine. Erik must think the same: he gives Charles’ arm a quick swat. “Oh, but you need it. Always wandering off into trouble._ Someone _has to look after you.”_  
  
 _“I’m perfectly competent.”_  
  
 _The resulting laugh is deep, throaty—straight from down inside of Erik. “I’m hardly denying that. You’re the most competent person I know. And you didn’t answer my question.”_  
  
 _“I wanted to know if you ever thought you’d be this… at ease. I’ve seen your memories, my friend: a quiet life escapes you, and, frankly, so far I think you’ve preferred it that way.”_  
  
 _A shrug. But… these times when Erik refuses to meet his eyes—so often they mean more than Erik would have them seem. “Maybe after Shaw….”_  
  
 _“Hmm?”_  
  
 _“Maybe after Shaw. I might be able to try something quieter then. I never thought about it, you understand? I always assumed I’d die trying to kill him. And it was all right—it didn’t matter, as long as he was dead. Now, though—”_  
  
 _“Erik.” To be so cavalier with a life like Erik’s... there’s so much to give there. Doesn’t Erik see that? Things have been terrible, yes, and Erik has been on his own a very long time, but to think he doesn’t see the potential inherent in himself—there’s a shade of tragedy in that._  
  
 _Well. If he can’t see it… maybe he needs to be_ shown.  
  
 _“After the war, you could accompany me to Westchester. I—Armando is acting Captain of the Guard at the moment, but I daresay he’d be more than happy to see the job pass to someone else. You could...”_  
  
 _Could stay. More nights like this, sprawled out on the grass, and Erik could advise on matters of military policy. He has an uncanny sense for how to draw the best out of a man in training, and he’s surprisingly good with the younger recruits. Having him so close would be… problematic, but he’s ignored Erik’s more carnal allure up until this point, and, with Erik willing to open his mind enough to leak emotions, that’ll be enough to be getting on with. He won’t be the first person in the world to need to suppress his more base desires, and—merely touching Erik’s mind is more intimate than sex would be with most people. Such a unique mind, worth having near, regardless of whether that means denying certain aspects of a more base nature._  
  
 _“You could stay,” Charles finishes, dropping his head to the side and staring at Erik’s face in profile. Like this, the sharp line of his nose is vividly apparent, endowing him with a hint of nobility: he could be a king from any number of the portraits lining Westchester’s halls. He’d fit right in with the physicality of the aristocracy._  
  
 _“Protecting you?” From anyone else, the question would hint at condemnation, possible rejection. Never Erik, though—he’s never been like anyone else, and he slides into the question, swirling it around in his mind—and, gods, it’s light in there, in his thoughts and his mind, and Charles trolls along through the pleasure the question has drawn up, ignoring specific thoughts—it’s only courtesy—and splashing about in the essence of the thinking instead. Erik’s mind ticks along pleasantly, well-oiled, like a machine, if a machine were capable of creativity. “I would think, Charles, that you’d know better than to ask me to do that.”_  
  
 _“I can think of no one more suited.” Truly, there would be no one better: thinking on it, he wraps the blanket tighter around his shoulders. He ought to have worn a jacket, as Erik did._  
  
 _“I don’t think you’ve thought about it much at all, actually. You’re…” Evidently confusing enough to trip up Erik’s thoughts: they flicker, darkening with uncertainty. “If I had to watch you die, Charles, what do you think I would do?”_  
  
 _They’re at war. If Erik hasn’t yet figured out that this current situation could mean exactly that, he’d best consider it soon._  
  
 _But… saying that. It sticks in his mouth, accompanied by an odd burn that’s a little too much like heartache._  
  
 _“Sometimes—Erik—people_ die _. It’s—of course it isn’t_ easy _, but I expect that you’d mourn, and I do hope you’d attend the memorial.” Cheeky smile, but Erik doesn’t laugh. He doesn’t look; only keeps staring out up at the sky, and, if he’s breathing, the motion of his chest—lack of motion—doesn’t show it. “Erik… it_ could _happen. You must know—“_  
  
 _“I_ do.” _He takes a deep breath. “I’m very familiar with loss. You think I don’t know? I—“ The air wheezes out between his teeth as he fights to compose himself. “The idea of watching you die, right now—you’re a friend, Charles, and I can’t fathom it. After all the people I’ve seen… Not again. I’ll do what it takes to make sure I don’t—that_ you _don’t—”_  
  
 _“Erik… it’s not your responsibility to—“_  
  
 _“No. But imagine if it_ were _.”_  
  
 _One little use of the subjunctive, and already the night feels colder. “Erik.” There’s more to say, but the sensation of having it stuck to his tongue grows worse, and though he turns to prop himself on his side, facing Erik, they might as well be miles apart: the closeness of before has vanished, Erik gone, lost in his own memories and whatever demons he’s evoked. Having been in Erik’s head doesn’t explain everything. That was a lie—knowing everything. No one could know everything. The snippets, yes, what happened with Shaw, but there’s more there to search out._  
  
 _“If it were my job to protect you, Charles—can you imagine what I’d feel, if I failed?”_  
  
 _“It doesn’t work like that. You try the best you can, and you fight to survive—to help those you care about survive—but you can’t wrap a person up in padding. You can’t lock them away from the world.”_  
  
 _“The world doesn’t deserve you.”_  
  
 _“You think far too highly of my good qualities, Erik. I’m flawed, like anyone else.”_  
  
 _“Yes. But that doesn’t make you any less remarkable.”_  
  
 _That’s true of anyone. Erik, too. Flawed? Immensely, but… good, too. He’s loyal, almost frighteningly so, and it shows in his dealings with his men, in how he’d take a blow for them, and in how he fights to teach them to protect themselves on their own. Harsh, but with a certain patience for the younger recruits that, while it doesn’t equate to gentleness, or anything even close, offers them chance after chance without lowering standards._  
  
 _Not that any of that precludes his frightening tendency to descend into decisions that, on the surface, are entirely irrational. Fear, though—it’s a powerful motivator. Erik has known loss, and seen first hand how cruel the world can be. A desire to shield those closest to him is admirable, but not when it tips toward more frightening aspects—that niggling worrying sensation, that Erik would, if he could, control things down to the smallest detail, lest any hardship surprise him._  
  
 _“It’s not worth worrying about,” he tells Erik slowly, biting the inside of his lip. The skin wrinkles under his teeth, and he soothes it back to smooth with his tongue. “If we die tomorrow, then we’ll only have lost today for worrying.”_  
  
 _“I’m not sure you mean that about anyone besides yourself.”_  
  
 _“Hmm?”_  
  
 _“You worry for Raven constantly.”_  
  
 _“Yes. She’s… disconcertingly unmoored at the moment. I’ve never seen her quite like this. It’s never easy for a king’s illegitimate child to find her footing at court, even if she’s been raised there, but, this last year—I do worry, I suppose. About her doing something foolish, like jumping into this war when she isn’t properly trained.”_  
  
 _“You’ve essentially raised her. That’s reasonable.”_  
  
 _“I suppose so. But it doesn’t mean she appreciates it.”_  
  
 _“Rather like someone else I know.”_  
  
 _Oh, honestly. Erik is an intelligent man: he can’t possibly think it’s the same thing. The narrow-eyed stare that he angles in Erik’s direction must convey that: Erik, who finally deigns to look over at Charles, simply smirks, rolling onto his side in the grass and giving Charles’ shin a fond nudge with his foot. “You’re very capable, I know. But that doesn’t mean you don’t need looking after.”_  
  
 _“I’m not your bearer.”_  
  
 _No. As far as Erik knows, that’s impossible, but dangling that out there—what the hell just came out of his mouth? That’s the sort of thing that shouldn’t be used, even for illustration, considering the implications. Erik may be his best friend, but dropping his guard this extensively for anyone, friend or not, is incredible foolishness._  
  
Very _foolish, as it turns out: Erik’s eyes sharpen, which is a sure sign he’s latched onto the thought. Argument for argument’s sake, perhaps, but a dangerous one. “I doubt I’ll ever have a bearer.”_  
  
 _All right… not quite the response that was expected. Picking at a stray thread on the blanket, Charles purposely holds his stare. Don’t look away, don’t give any indication, don’t—_  
  
 _“I don’t think bearers are weak, you know.”_  
  
 _Then Erik is significantly in the minority. He must be aware of that, but he’s unruffled, blinking and stroking his fingers through the grass between them. It’s… problematic, watching those motions. Too much of a temptation to imagine the sensation of fingers in hair instead, caressing, working out the tension._  
  
 _“I’m surprised,” Charles says eventually._  
  
 _“Are you? You shouldn’t be. They may be biologically wired to crave their guardian, but guardians are no better. I’m told it’s… quite motivating, the urge to protect one’s bearer.”_  
  
 _“Protect? I’m sure. Not smother. Not repress.”_  
  
 _“Not what you think society does, then.”_  
  
 _“I think that the system we have relegates bearers to little better than slaves.”_  
  
 _“I take it you don’t plan to treat the future Xavier consort that way?”_  
  
 _His future bearer will hardly have reason to be treated that way. And, if Charles ever became so delusional, there’s a disturbingly large secret that he or she would be free to reveal—definitely not possible to hide either, considering the difference in anatomy. About the time anyone gets a decent look at his genitals, his secret will be pretty damn obvious—and marriage rather necessitates allowing his spouse to get that look.  “Absolutely not.”_  
  
 _“And you don’t think you’d be tempted to override him or her? Not ever?”_  
  
 _Erik seems honestly thoughtful, peeling apart a blade of grass and, once it’s split down the middle, flicking it in Charles’ direction. Grinning—ignore the thumping in his chest, the panic that bubbles up unbidden—Charles picks up a blade of his own and drops it into Erik’s hair. “Isn’t everyone tempted to override his spouse at some point? I think the point is to recognize it isn’t a good idea.”_  
  
 _“I would, you know,” Erik admits. He looks away, flopping over onto his back and peering up toward the sky. “Not because the person was less than I am. But the first time he or she did something dangerous—something that—I can’t say, really. I’m not sure I can explain it. I don’t want to change the system: I can’t—I suppose I can’t countenance taking that power away from other guardians when I would also do just about anything to protect those that I love. A family, children, in today’s world? Who wouldn’t have the almost overwhelming desire to order his spouse to keep safe? That much power—it might not be exactly right, but I’d want it. I’d want to know I could…_ feel _, I suppose, the whole of my spouse’s life at my fingertips, where I could do anything to protect him.”_  
  
 _Yes. Whether or not he or she_ wanted _to be protected. That’s Erik all over: protect, protect, protect, but he’s blurred that line between protection and suppression. He goes too far, forgets that the ends don’t justify the means—not always. “Sounds to me like you assume you’ll eventually have a bearer.”_  
  
 _“No. I don’t intend to ever imprint.”_  
  
 _And it’s wrong, but there’s a tiny spark of satisfaction upon hearing that. If Erik never takes a bearer, Erik can accompany him to Westchester, and… perhaps not as captain of the guard, but Erik has many talents, and it won’t be difficult to find him a place. They can work together, keep up what they’re doing now: this closeness, and while that can never mean anything sexual, the intimacy—talking, sharing their worlds, feeling things together—works to slake that particular thirst. “Erik—“_  
  
 _“It’s easier… not to have anyone to care about.”_  
  
 _Easier. Well, yes, but lonely. And most people can live the whole of their lives without experiencing loss in so raw a fashion as Erik has experienced it. “Should I be flattered that you’ve deemed friendship within the realms of your emotional repertoire?”_  
  
 _Only if flattery comes with bitterness these days: the corners of Erik’s mouth press together, and he grimaces, ducking one arm behind his head. He arches his back, pushing his shoulders and hips more firmly against the ground, and, in an attempt to better situate himself, he shifts, possibly trying to level the ground beneath him with the weight of his body. “You were never supposed to happen. This was meant to be a military alliance, nothing more.”_  
  
 _Not since roughly ten minutes into their acquaintance, it hasn’t been. The instant spark is roughly due to biological compatibility and attraction, but it would have been the same even before the storms: two people find each other sexually attractive, and that attraction intensifies once they discover they find each other mentally attractive as well. “Hmm. Doesn’t say much for the effectiveness of your plan.”_  
  
 _Though Erik’s laugh sounds grudging, it slips out nonetheless. “You’re a guardian. I would never have allowed myself such comfortability with a bearer.”_  
  
 _“Oh? Should I assume you’ve never had sex?” Patently untrue, of course: Erik isn’t one to brag, but there have been the hints of stories, warmed-eyed and amused, detailing a quick quip from an ill-advised location for a tryst, or a particularly embarrassing encounter. Something about a bar in New Hartford, though Erik never let slip more than a furtive smirk that had somehow resulted in him tilting his jaw line up as well, more than a little pleased with himself at whatever the memory had been._  
  
 _“Don’t be an ass.” But he has a smile to his voice, and there’s the beginning rumbles of a laugh. “I’ve never had sex with a_ bearer _. Sterile men and women are, as you well know, common enough to provide plenty of alternative.”_  
  
 _“And if you were to accidentally imprint?”_  
  
 _Erik’s chest vibrates with an annoyed hum, and—really, now, there’s no need for—but Erik knocks away any attempts to stop him from pulling the blanket up tighter around Charles’ chin. It hadn’t fallen_ that _far down. No need to fuss. “It would seem I don’t need to,” Erik answers dryly. “You’re trouble enough. Keep that blanket up: you’ll catch a chill.”_  
  
 _“Oh, sod off. I’ve been taking care of myself for nearly a quarter of a century: your mothering is quite unappreciated. And it was a serious question.”_  
  
 _“Demanding a serious answer?” But, teasing tone or not, Erik lays back into the grass and tucks his arm under his head. It’s not a rejection: more of a moment to think on the answer. “I don’t know. I don’t… think I’d be good. For a bearer, that is. Too much history. Too much... mess.”_  
  
 _“But would you treat him or her as custom dictates?”_  
  
 _“Gods, Charles, what is this, an interview? Is Raven secretly a bearer, and you’re seeking a match?” Huffing out a laugh, he rolls over and grins at Charles. “Maybe set up a panel, interview candidates for her?”_  
  
 _This time, he flat out kicks at Erik’s leg with his foot. “You’re awful. And I’m just curious.”_  
  
 _“Well, then for curiosity’s sake: I’d keep most of the customs. Not all of them. I would want final say over my bearer’s actions, but I would hardly want a mindless doll. I would want a bearer who would challenge me, who was capable in his or her own right, but the idea of having such an intimate relationship without also having the final say over my bearer’s life—perhaps_ you _, Charles, aren’t terrified by the idea of your bearer marching off to do as they please whenever they please, but—at least_ try _to understand why I’m not so keen to change the system.”_  
  
 _“And if you made the wrong decisions? You’d be ruining a life.”_  
  
 _“Honestly, you make it sound as though I’d dictate the everyday things. I wouldn’t. And I’d take my bearer’s viewpoints into account.”_  
  
 _Until they became inconvenient, of course. But why would Erik think any differently? He’s never had to consider life from a bearer’s viewpoint. To him—unmated, a guardian—this issue is very much in the abstract. Utterly theoretical._  
  
 _Rather than answer, Charles buries his nose into the blanket and leans back, arching his neck back and shoving his head down into the softness of the pillow—_  
  
 _Wait. That’s not—that isn’t right—_  
  
 _“Charles.”_  
  
 _Where…?_  
  
 _“_ Charles.”  
  
The grass is much too soft, and the blanket smells of clean linen and not the mustiness of a military issue that got a touch damp in the last storm. And—that night, a few months before they’d caught up with Shaw, Erik had certainly not been touching his face, skating fingers down to his chin.  
  
He opens his eyes.  
  
Oh.  
  
Only a dream. Only a memory.  
  
“Are you all right?” Erik asks, frowning a bit, and—gods, drawing the blanket down away from his chin. Not like that night at all.  
  
But not different enough to be of any comfort.  
  
“Just a dream,” he answers groggily, and—there, right at his fingertips, surrounded by pillows, lest Charles roll in the night: David. Safe. Asleep. Content. “I was remembering…”  
  
But he doesn’t particularly want Erik knowing what he was remembering. Happier times may be a soothing influence, but they’re also the kind of knife that goes the deepest.  
  
“Nothing,” he finishes. “Never mind.”  
  
Erik clearly doesn’t believe him, but he doesn’t push, setting his hip down on the bed instead and tugging the blanket a few inches further down until Charles’ upper body is exposed and he’s able to scoot up into a sitting position against the headboard.  
  
Propped up enough, anyway, to see that Erik has a sheet of paper folded in his hand. “What’s that?” he asks, raking his gaze up Erik’s body on the way to his face.  
  
Erik looks good this morning. Well-rested, and fresh from a shower if the dampness in his hair is any indicator. He’s dressed himself in a deep red shirt, nothing fancy, but with a high color and a fabric that has some stretch to it. Black, fitted trousers too—it ought to be illegal, how good his backside looks in them, and that view would be a fine thing indeed, if physicality alone were the measure of the situation.  
  
“This?” Erik holds up the paper, jostling it until it flutters. “Something I thought you might like to see.”  
  
A dangerous notion, considering—Erik doesn’t have much sense of what’s likable. But, best to get the reveal over with: Charles plucks the paper out of Erik’s fingers, ignoring Erik’s easy grin, and notches his nails into the edges of the crease, unfolding it.  
  
Perfect: a legal document. Exactly what he needs first thing in the morning. Nothing like complicated jargon to stimulate the brain into wakefulness. This ought to be—  
  
But…  
  
This is something else. Something more. His name, and Erik’s, David’s, and… Westchester. This is a document of legal succession for Westchester, signed in Erik’s hand, and issued from Genosha. It’s a new system, this matter of Genosha holding legitimacy over the other kingdoms, but, for the moment, that can’t be opposed, and the document itself requires quite enough focus to be getting on with.  
  
“Is this…?”  
  
“Yes. A legal guarantee that your son will inherit.”  
  
At sixteen, evidentially. Two years earlier than usual, which must be a gift from Erik. Not bad, if one ignores that David never should have had to worry about this in the first place. Even so, there’s a level of comfort to holding the document in his hand, signed, and knowing— _knowing_ that his son will inherit as he’s supposed to do.  
  
As calmly as he can manage with shaking hands, Charles folds the document back up and sets it down onto his lap. “Thank you,” he tells Erik quietly—and very deliberately does not meet his eye. That would be far too much, combined with the concession that he’s already given by deigning to let slip a “thanks.”  
  
“You’re welcome.” And then, because he can’t leave well enough alone, Erik leans in and curves his hand to Charles’ face, half brushing, half patting, quick and only once, before withdrawing completely and sliding his gaze over toward David. “Wake him, if you would. We need to be getting along to the train.”  
  
And so they do—but that doesn’t mean much for Charles’ enthusiasm. Over the next few minutes, Erik attempts to send him off to wash his face and brush his teeth—but that means leaving Erik to dress David, and the stalemate that ensues at that prospect derails any hope of progress. Thank the gods Erik is on a schedule: after a few minutes of bearing up under Charles’ complaints, he gives in and allows Charles to carry David along, setting him on the bathroom floor on top of a towel while he takes to washing up.  
  
Erik is relegated to standing in the doorway.  
  
Though Erik doesn’t stare, but instead leans against the doorframe, gaze skipping about the room with no particular destination, it’s difficult to shake the suspicion that Erik’s focus is solely on _him_ —and Charles likely sets a new record for speed in morning ablutions, eager as he is to escape the scrutiny.  
  
Upon completion, they move on to the more sartorial part of the morning. This is easier, more familiar: how many times did they change clothes with the other nearby? Granted, underwear always stayed on, and it was never like this, with Erik sitting on the bed, waiting: and how interesting can it possibly be, watching a person pick out a pair of trousers? Good trousers, of course: well-tailored dark brown and cut from a thick fabric, a sturdy and warm material, but still nothing more than trousers. That doesn’t seem to matter to Erik, unfortunately, who regards the clothing assessingly, probably evaluating whether or not it’s sufficiently warm.  
  
The shirt ought to soothe Erik’s worry, tailored as it is for the autumn in Westchester. Green, long-sleeved, and made of needlessly fine linen which he has previously only used for ceremony, but it’s a fine shirt, and it will do well enough for the journey. He ties it off with a brown silk sash to bind the shirt at his waist, and finishes with brown leather boots that clasp at the top. Or, perhaps not quite finished: last of all, a knee-length jacket in the same color as the sash, with an abundance of pockets that have always come in handy.  
  
That’s it then. Good. Ready to… leave. Away from Westchester, from his home, from—  
  
Things he shouldn’t consider at the moment, not when Erik is nearby to notice anything, from the smallest facial expression to the largest fit of temper. Neither are out of the question. This isn’t _easy,_ this matter of leaving, and—  
  
 _Don’t_ think about it.  
  
As soon as David is bundled up in a warm blanket, Erik bustles them out of the room and off toward the waiting carriage.  
  
The carriage will, as is the custom, only take them to the train station. Once, the trip might have been made by car, but while the technology still exists, the regions where gasoline was most plentiful have been thoroughly decimated centuries ago in the storms, and what little gasoline they can gather now goes toward other purposes. Trains and such are once again run on steam—wood is still plentiful—and, in some cases, coal.  
  
Erik goes with him to the station, making certain that he and David are escorted properly to the railcar that will be both their quarters for the journey—two days—and their prison. It’s not as though Charles doesn’t notice the heavy lock on the door, and while the interior is large and roomy, lined all around the edges with leather seats, it doesn’t assuage the feel of Erik settling in his mind, dampening his telepathy.  
  
The mere suggestion of that—that what happened with Frost could happen again—chokes up his lungs, and he instinctively steps back from Erik, drawing up into the seat against the window and tucking his coat around David. It will do nothing to truly protect his child, but it feels safer, and, at this point, he’d settle with quieting his mind and not giving into the shaking and the crushing anxiety that is stealing up over him at the prospect of again having his best and last defense snatched away from him.  
  
There was never any real chance that Erik wouldn’t notice, but the sharp pity in his eyes—the apology hanging there—is infuriating to behold, and his actual verbal attempts to soothe don’t make it any better. “No one is going to hurt you—“  
  
“Don’t patronize me,” he snaps, turning away from Erik to push his forehead to the wonderfully cool glass of the window. Almost like when he used to dive into the pond on the edge of the Westchester estate, it’s clear and cool, and it pushes the fogginess out of his head well enough to let him think. Those early childhood days seem dreadfully distant now—another life, so removed that they might as well have happened to someone else.  
  
Erik slides onto the seat beside him, one hand dropping to Charles’ knee. He rests it there but doesn’t squeeze, apparently content to soak up the body heat and the contact. “It’s hardly belittling if you have actual cause for worry.”  
  
“Whose fault is that?” He grimaces, but he doesn’t turn away from the window. His body is between David and Erik, David tucked on the side against the wall, and, for now, there’s no impetus for movement.  
  
Erik never hesitates: “My fault.”  
  
Yes, it absolutely is. Erik knows, and that ought to mean Erik _does_ something about it. Makes a _change_ , makes a—  
  
If the door hadn’t slid open in that moment, rattling on its metal track, the conversation might have deteriorated into a full-stop fight—not that they haven’t engaged in enough of those in the recent past. Hearing the door slide open, though, is an insult of another kind. He’d been so certain it was locked, and here he’s been sitting, motionless and lulled by the lie that he was boxed in, utterly uncomprehending of the knowledge it would have taken to motivate him to try to _run_. Pathetic. In the darker moments—right now—it’s alarmingly easy to wonder if his own captivity—if there’s more he could have done to... Foolish, of course. But… has a portion of own mind set out for sabotage? If that’s true, and if he’s erred because of it, he’ll have to live with knowing he has allowed a good many deaths.  
  
Allowed. Wanted. They’re too close together.  
  
He’d wanted Erik, before the imprint, and it would be deceptively easy to pretend that never was, that all feelings are only biological. But… it would be a lie. There was logic to it too, and a slow deepening of friendship. That tug he’s feeling now—it isn’t _all_ the imprint. There was Erik, and friendship, and talks about hopes and fears, chess, kindness, Erik’s temper and surprising patience, and a thousand and one tiny details of affection and consideration that Erik had shown him.  
  
What does that _mean?_  
  
“Charles, this is Logan.”  
  
And so it is: it’s the same man from the hallway. The very same one who had come to tell Erik that snatch of news—the news of David’s discovery and the capture of more of Westchester’s people. Logan had seen Erik holding him down, and he had done nothing, offered not even a backwards glance. Oh, yes, he remembers Logan, and it isn’t with any sort of fondness.  
  
This man will give him no ground.  
  
And that’s undoubtedly why Erik picked him as an escort.  
  
That, and his obvious proficiency in combat. No man is this physically honed, this battle-worn without having some measure of skill—and there’s no difficulty in recognizing when a man has seen serious combat; it’s in his eyes. Besides that, he is wearing both a sword and a gun on his belt, and he also hardly deigns to give Charles even a glance: unflappable, his demeanor says, and that is something Erik would value when picking an escort for his emotionally unstable, clever, and persuasive—Erik once said Charles could talk anyone into anything—fiancé.  
  
Logan grunts as a means of greeting and settles with his back to the wall, one knee bent slightly as he crosses his arms and waits for the scene to play out. He might bother to look as though he cares to at least some degree, but he doesn’t seem inclined, content instead to study the confines of the compartment with all the expertise of a man who understands the importance of knowing all weak spots and exits.  
  
Apparently satisfied that Logan will wait as long as he needs to, Erik gets to his feet and bends over, fitting a hand to Charles’ cheek in order to tip his head upright and to the side, where he can drop a kiss to his temple. It’s not unpleasant: Erik’s lips are warm and dry, and his hand cradles rather than demands, affection obvious in the care he takes with his touch.  
  
“I won’t be long,” Erik assures him, running his thumb over the space just under Charles’ eye. His touch strays towards the bridge of Charles’ nose, stroking, but it doesn’t quite reach. “A few weeks at most.”  
  
 _Take your time_ he means to say, but what comes out is, “I don’t want you to do this.”  
  
Another kiss, this time to the space under his eye, occupied until this point by that soothing caress. “I know. I—Charles, I’m sorry.” His lips linger, brushing at skin until he leans down a bit further and presses his cheek flesh against Charles’ so that he may murmur his words: little secrets, not particularly damaging, but only for the two of them. Because Erik? He will never be this affectionate with anyone else, and there was never any question—it’d been evident even in those months they spent as friends—that it is only for Charles. A little gift of Erik’s for him, meant for no one else. “Remember when we were in Charleston? And I told you it would have been more fitting if you ruled there rather than in Westchester?”  
  
He’ll never forget that. But he nods anyway, just to let Erik know, though Erik clearly is already aware. “I laughed and told you no place but Westchester would suit me. Not any of the kingdoms. And you asked who, if not myself, would take Genosha once we deposed Shaw.”  
  
Erik nods and puffs out a soft breath over Charles’ cheek. “You told me that if I didn’t want to accompany you back to Westchester, I could have Genosha.”  
  
Yes, he had. More the fool him. “And now it’s yours.”  
  
“I always thought you’d be a better ruler than I would.”  
  
“I’m sure you’re terribly sad that I turned out to be unfit.” Biting. Caustic. But Erik will understand, and he shouldn’t have brought up this memory if he didn’t want to go down this path.  
  
“You’re still going to rule, Love. Just in a different way. But you _will_. We’ll talk it out when I come back—what duties will be yours, and what will be mine. We’ll shape this kingdom _together._ ”  
  
“Is that what you meant to arrive at by mentioning that memory? Because your assurances are worth nothing to me.”  
  
Except, obviously, they _are._ The relief brought on by seeing that document this morning—Erik’s word _means_ something. Maybe not precisely what it _should_ mean, but no one objective would accuse Erik of lying. He manipulates and he omits, but, as a general rule, he doesn’t lie. Right? It’s difficult to think with Erik this close.  
  
Sighing, Erik smoothes his lips over the bridge of Charles’ nose: more a drag of lips than a kiss, simply their skin touching and trailing little sparks in the wake of contact. He hates himself just a little for how he’s hyper-aware of himself wherever Erik has touched—it’s been a constant sensation in this last day.  
  
“No,” Erik whispers, “I meant for you to remember that, once, you thought _I_ was fit to rule. I haven’t changed, Charles.”  
  
“I was wrong.” Very wrong.  
  
“I’ll do good things for this world. Just a little longer, and I’ll be able to. United, it will be easier. And—“  
  
He breaks off, hanging for a moment, lips still partly open and tongue set on his lower teeth, waiting for a word. But, whatever it is, Erik pulls back from it—and then from Charles too, straightening up and once again cupping his face in both hands, tilting it up and toward his gaze. “I’ll prove to you that I can be a good ruler. And I’ll prove that I can be a good husband too.”  
  
 _Liar_. But he doesn’t stay it. It sticks somewhere in his throat—it’s like that memory all over again—stopping him up and strangling his air.  
  
“I love you.”  
  
Charles blinks. He hears, but—  
  
Is this supposed to hurt so much?  
  
“Please don’t,” he half-whines. It’s been a long time since he’s sounded this cracked—probably since that night in the tent when Erik had discovered what he was. “Don’t go do this. I don’t want to go to bed with someone who has this kind of blood on his hands—” Every night, knowing that those hands touching him have killed so many…. “I… know you love me.” Oh, and what that confession costs him—even more when he sees the brightening in Erik’s eyes. “And I’m asking you, on the basis of that, not to do this. You’re hurting me.”  
  
And he’s hurting Erik too, when he says things like that. That much is very obvious. But—he’s not gaining anything at all. His plea is rebuffed the moment he utters it, even if Erik turns it over, searching all sides of it and biting at his lip, sorry in ways he won’t say, but still entrenched in his convictions. “Of all the things I don’t want to do, Charles—“ He closes his eyes and drops his hands; the physical proof of Erik’s refusal to _see_ comes forward and provides Charles with a cutting verbal point of reference: “I never want to hurt you. But I know what needs to be done. Did you know that just last week, a little girl, five years old—they strung her up. And you know why? Because her eyes were yellow. That’s it. Five years old, Charles, and they _butchered_ her. I can’t—I—“ Erik’s teeth clamp down into his lip. “I can’t let these things happen. I’ve lived this, and when people hate what’s different to the point that they try to destroy it, they’re past the point of rationality. And I can’t—I _won’t_ see what happened to me happen to mutants—and the only way I can stop it everywhere is if I have control of the regions. I _know_ what needs to be done, and I won’t turn from that—not even for you.”  
  
There are many things Erik won’t do for him, no matter what he says to the contrary.  
  
“Clean hands, clean heart,” Erik continues gently, tinged with melancholy, “I can only have one of the two.”  
  
That’s not _true._ To believe that his conscience can only be clean—that he must do what he thinks best, though it will dirty his hands—at the expense of his conscience—it’s wrong. It’s the deepest wrong. There has to be a way to stop the killings. Westchester—things had been better in Westchester. Occasional riots, but the peace had kept for the most part, and they’d been working, trying, and, yes, it’s worth in the South, but this isn’t the answer. What Erik is doing, it isn’t right either.  
  
Charles turns away, back to the window. The moment is over, and while he never had a chance at changing Erik’s mind, any hope of it has vanished. “You don’t have either. Hands, heart—they’ve both been soiled.”  
  
Erik sighs, but he lets the matter drop, ignoring—he _always_ ignores—what he doesn’t want to hear and what he doesn’t have the time to argue over. “I won’t be long,” he says, drifting back in closer, skimming fingertips over the shell of Charles’ ear. “And while I know better than to think you’ll settle in right away, I hope you’ll find Genosha suitably accommodating.”  
  
“Erik—“  
  
“Logan will see you to the palace, and from there you’ll be met by someone you know.”  
  
“Who—?”  
  
“We’ll be married a few days after I return, and while I don’t dare to hope that you’ll be very cooperative, those planning the wedding will consult with you regardless. Your suggestions, if sincere, will be taken into account. I would be very pleased if you’d make some.”  
  
Certainly he would. Erik has never made it a secret that he would like for the wedding to be more than an ordeal. But if it’s authenticity he’s after—a true, joyous affair that has Charles’ marks on it—he ought to have considered asking rather than telling when he announced the bonding would take place all those months—years, now—ago in the hours after Shaw’s death.  
  
“We’ll talk things over when I get back.” After killing hundreds more people. Marvelous. “I’ll miss you.”  
  
Erik drops one last kiss to Charles’ cheek, and he makes to reach out to David, but Charles yanks the baby away so suddenly that he gives a gurgle of discontent—any regular infant would be squalling, but his wonderful, clever boy can feel the emotions and stays mostly quiet, possibly helped in that by his father’s telepathy.  
  
Though there’s no mistaking how much he disapproves, Erik allows the action with no more than a frown. This—his desperation to keep his son from Erik—will, without a doubt, be one of the things Erik wishes to “talk” about when he returns. More dictation, more demands.  
  
Once he reaches the edge of the compartment and lays one hand on the door handle, Erik spares a glance for Logan, who has been leaning back against this wall the whole time, appearing utterly bored and more than a little put out at having to be present. “I expect he’ll be well taken care of,” Erik tells him coldly. And, yes, there he is: the Erik Lehnsherr that the rest of the world sees. No tenderness there.  
  
“Don’t get your panties in a twist,” Logan mutters, rolling his eyes.  
  
Anyone else would have metal through his gut. Logan earns only a glare. Who _is_ this man?  
  
“ _Logan.”_  
  
Logan sighs. “I’ll practically chew his food for him, _Sir_.”  
  
Oh? If he tries, he’ll have a fork through his eye at the first opportunity. Erik must be thinking similarly: a hint of a smile forms at his lips, and he darts a quick look at Charles.  
  
“I would pay money to see you try,” Erik drawls, appearing very sincerely as though he would. It _is_ the sort of thing he’d enjoy. He always was a bit amused by Charles’ innovative methods of self-defense.  
  
Logan huffs. “Yeah, sure.”  
  
Conversation at an end—it apparently is, and it’s a miracle it’s gone this long, since Erik isn’t one for talking to most people—Erik nods one last time at Logan and, while his step is slower than usual, he does move out into the corridor, pulling the door shut after him. The fact that the door locks behind him—Charles knows by this time the sound of metal so engaged—is not meant to be subtle. Erik sends his messages as he pleases, and it’s not difficult to comprehend when he’s doing his best to be obvious.  
  
Honestly, though, if he was so set on sending a message, he could have done better than to leave Charles alone with a man who is making no secret of his desire not to have this assignment.  
  
Dejected, Charles flops back down against his seat and presses his head back to the window. The journey hasn’t started yet, and already he’s worn thin. If he makes it to Genosha at all—all right, yes, that was needlessly fatalistic—he might just surprise Erik and sleep for a week rather than causing any trouble.  
  
But, for now, he has nothing to do outside of ignoring the man who is very pointedly doing his best to do likewise.  
  
Mutual goals are important, he thinks sourly. Just look at the wreck that is he and Erik. No mutual goals there. Just chaos and friction and the kind of chemistry that was always the stuff of nightmares for him: the biggest, loudest reason to warn himself away from guardians. Not much good now, those warnings.  
  
All in all, mutual avoidance isn’t such a bad basis for a relationship.  
  
Hopefully, he and Logan can make it to Genosha without saying a word.  
  
\---------------------  
  
As it turns out, they hard make it an hour out of the station before Logan breaks the silence.  
  
“Cut it out.”  
  
Granted, that reprimand might have been earned: Charles has spent the last hour alternately fussing over David and staring at Logan out of the corner of his eye. Ordinarily, he’d skim some surface thoughts, but Erik’s presence lingers in his mind, active enough that Erik would be alerted to the tampering. Prior to the last few days, distance would have prevented Erik from doing anything about that tampering, but now that Erik has spent this much time in his mind—it’s impossible to untangle the fail-safes Erik has littered behind himself. Besides that, there’s a fair chance that, if he were to begin dismantling the traces of Erik’s presence, he’d flip some sort of mental switch, possibly the kind that will knock him out. But that isn’t something he can discern without a little digging—and, as irritating as it is, that only brings him full circle: he can’t do it without Erik knowing, and he’s not so naïve as to think that Erik doesn’t have some of those horrible telepathy-dampening helmets handy in Genosha.  
  
Despite having been earned, Logan’s brash acknowledgement of Charles’ scrutiny is… unexpected, to say the least. He’d thought—what _had_ he thought? Maybe that Logan hadn’t noticed his consideration? That he wouldn’t care if he did?  
  
Logan laughs, though he doesn’t sound the least bit amused. “Don’t think you need to look like I’ve slapped you. If it’s all the same to you, I’d rather you don’t go back to Lehnsherr looking like I’ve done something that’d give him reason to kill me.”  
  
Any other time, he might bother to assure Logan that Erik wouldn’t kill him for merely a slap… but that’s actually not a promise that can be kept. What Erik would and wouldn’t do is all a bit of a mystery at the moment. “I’d hate to drag you into trouble with your employer,” he answers icily instead.  
  
Logan, it seems, is a veritable well of unexpected reactions: the height of his reaction is to chuckle to himself and lean back into his seat, raising his hand up as if preparing to take a puff on a cigarette or a cigar. When he finds his hand empty, he shoots it an offended frown, ostensibly holding it personally responsible for his lack of tobacco. “Cute tricks,” he drawls after a few moments, “but I’ve seen it all before. Fancy accent, bit of a mouth on you—I already know you think I’m less than dirt for following Lehnsherr, so man up and tell me that rather than insulting me in every way but directly.”  
  
Readjusting David in his arms, Charles swallows down the stream of swears that are not, as Logan terms it, “fancy.” He’s led an army—does Logan really think he’s some wet-behind-the-ears child who’s only just ventured beyond his mother’s skirts? “I hardly think I need to _tell_ you that I believe you’ve picked the wrong man to follow. Or do you approve of genocide, rape, and indiscriminate conquering?”  
  
Logan rolls his eyes. They’re talking about some of the world’s worst sins, and yet this man approaches it in a casual sprawl, unaffected, like he _doesn’t even care_.  
  
It’s rather embarrassing how heated Charles can feel his cheeks becoming. Inconvenient too—he’s never had a liar’s face; his emotions hang on his features like the bloody Sunday laundry on the line.  
  
“Excuse me?” he finally manages, mostly because, honestly, he’s really not certain what Logan’s playing at. He might not even be playing at anything at all, at least not beyond a desire to be irritating.  
  
It doesn’t take long to get the sense that Logan is very good at being exactly that: irritating.  
  
“You want to know why I follow Lehnsherr?” Logan says, finally leaning forward and taking something seriously. Just short of a miracle, that is—Charles was beginning to despair that he even had the capability. “Then just ask.”  
  
What the hell does this man want? A personal notice carved out in block capitals in red crayon? Perhaps under a spotlight? Something equally as blunt? “Fine,” he snaps. “Why do you follow him?”  
  
“Good. Now we’re finally getting to the right questions.” He grins. “You heard of Stryker?”  
  
“The man whose head Erik so helpfully removed from his body with a steel beam? Yes, I’m familiar.” Most mutants are, and of all the people Logan could bring up, Stryker is one of the last Charles would like to discuss, because, in this case, Erik might not have been… entirely unjustified. Similar to Shaw in that respect, actually. Both had experimented on mutants, but whereas Shaw had been… well, the gods only know what drove that man, but Stryker had done what he did out of pure hatred and a desire to wipe mutants off the face of the earth. Some of his experiments—the pictures alone are enough to generate nightmares.  
  
“Yeah? I’ve got him to thank for having metal welded to my bones.”  
  
If the circumstances were different—Logan’s… whatever this is—what _is_ his mutation?--it could be a little bit fascinating. How did Stryker manage that without killing him? _Why_ would he do something like that? Join metal to bone: what's the purpose?  
  
Logan, though he must see Charles’ reaction, ignores him. “You know what it’s like to have metal welded to your bones, Xavier?” As much as he’s a living hunk of muscle, he’s very nearly delicate in how he arches one furry eyebrow. Unfortunately for Charles’ mental commentary, rather than leaving him looking foolish, it does, as he no doubt intended, underscore whatever it is he’s trying to say. “Course not. But _I_ do. And I have Lehnsherr to thank for busting that facility wide open and making sure that I didn’t spend the rest of what promises to be a damn long life—accelerated healing is a bitch—in a tiny little cell being cut into by men who think they have that right.”  
  
Ah, accelerated healing: that answers... part of the question, anyway. And, as reasons for loyalty go, Logan's isn't a bad one. “Gratitude doesn’t mean you need to help Erik perpetuate his own set of crimes.”  
  
“Maybe not. But I’m not stupid enough to think that Stryker was the only man like that. I’d rather see things run by Lehnsherr than by someone else who might be more inclined to flay me open again. And Shaw was a menace.”  
  
“The devil you know,” Charles mutters, looking away. David. He can look at David. There is—despite whatever this is that he’s having with Logan, and it feels a whole lot like a little more faith collapsing—despite all of that, there is still good in this world. His son, who stares up at him with his Charles’ eyes, and Moira’s face, who doesn’t know where they’re going, and really only cares that he’s back with his father, snug in his arms. “Very practical of you—and cold, to the face of someone who’s getting the short end of things because of men like you. Somewhere, I bet someone following Stryker looked at _you_ and said the same thing.”  
  
Of all the things he’s said, _that_ is what finally manages to peak Logan’s anger. But for someone so rude, Logan is surprisingly controlled about his rage: if his eyes hadn’t gone dark, sunk like pits into his head, Charles might not have known. “Do you like feeling sorry for yourself, Xavier?”  
  
Feeling sorry for himself? That is what this… _cretin_ thinks he’s off about? His wife has been murdered; his kingdom conquered; and he’s about to be forcibly married and, shortly thereafter, impregnated. And any complaints about that are nothing more than a bout of self-induced pity?  
  
His thoughts aren’t lost on Logan, and it’s infuriating to realize that his reaction is satisfying the man. He leans back into the cushions, one arm stretching out back along the edge of the seat; his head lolls sideways toward the window, and he takes a moment to study the moving country-side before he presses on with his demented logic and what passes with him for moral reasoning.  
  
“I’m not denying your situation is shit, Kid. But you know how many folks are starving in this world? Hell if I know what happened three hundred years ago, but whatever it was, the land is shot, and anyone with any brains knows it. Most places crops are hard to grow. The population is just barely breaking even. And all you have to do for your next meal is spread your legs for a man who worships the ground you walk on. It ain’t nice, kid—it’s fucked up—but you’re getting fed, and Lehnsherr won’t hurt you. You think you know desperation? Desperation is not knowing if you’ll live to see morning. You wouldn’t know desperation if it waltzed up and bit you on the ass.” He tips his face back away from the window. “Though, I bet the biting is Lehnsherr’s job, huh?”  
  
If he didn’t have David—if this weren’t a car on a train with other people nearby, and if—if—  
  
He’d kill Logan. Turn his brain to a puddle of pulp, and let Erik pick up the mess, because this is the sort of man Erik is relying on—one who thinks rape is a _joke_.  
  
Bloody hell.  
  
“You don’t have to like it, Xavier, and I don’t blame you one bit for giving him hell. I’d want to kill Lehnsherr too, if I were you,” Logan admits, dropping his frown for a sort of half snarl. It’s not pretty, whatever it is. “But you want me to go against a man who saved my ass, who’s always made sure I could expect to have enough food and a roof over my head? I’ve got a girl,” he says suddenly, words turning more clipped, personal, “that I take care of. Sixteen now. Just turned it last week. And if I don’t bring home food, she doesn’t eat. If Lehnsherr doesn’t give me what he does, she doesn’t have a place to live. I’ve got one person I care about in this sorry excuse for a world, Xavier, and I’m not about to let her down just because I’m uncomfortable with how Lehnsherr goes about picking himself a bearer.” He stops, tipping his chin back and taking in a deep breath. And, inexplicably, when he goes on, he sounds… almost gentler. “I’m not saying it’s right, what Lehnsherr is doing to you. It ain’t. But you think you’re the first bearer who’s ever found himself on his back in bed when he didn’t want to be? And I think you’ve got it a damn sight better than most. Lehnsherr sure as hell ain’t gonna hurt you, Xavier. He thinks you hung the moon.”  
  
Is it cold in the railcar? Charles’ fingers feel cold, almost wooden, and when he goes to pull them back and snuggle them into David’s blankets, they may as wel be disconnected from his body. And he—can’t quite feel his chest, like someone else is breathing for him.  
  
“If it’d been Shaw, you think you’d be where you are now?” Logan presses on, frowning, but… strangely serious. Two minutes ago, Charles would have sworn he hadn’t had it in him. “That girl who stopped the storms—how do you think it was for _her_?”  
  
Horrible. Absolutely awful. And that only deepens the well of what feels like acid in his gut.  
  
“Shaw would have tied you down and plowed into you until you screamed yourself raw. And he wouldn’t have cared if you did.” He huffs out a breath. “You think I’m being cruel to you, Xavier, telling you this?” He shrugs. “Probably am. But it’s true. Lehnsherr is no Shaw, and you’re lucky about that. You’ve got the most powerful man in the world willing to get on his knees for you. And you’re whining about it. So, don’t whine. _Use_ it.” Taking a moment to shake off what was apparently a very traumatizing image for him—all this, and it’s the thought of Erik having sex that torments him?—he turns back to Charles in a rush of blunt opinion. “Shaw would have taken your kid—“ His eyes flick down to David, “and he would have killed him right on the spot, just because he wasn’t the father. Lehnsherr took one look at the kid’s eyes, saw that they looked like yours, and decided he was gonna give the little brat a whole kingdom when he grew up.”  
  
“My wife was _murdered_ because of him.”  
  
Logan nods. “Don’t know what you want me to say. We both know that’s the kind of thing that cuts you up. But you can either buck up and deal with what you have now and realize that, compared to a lot of the world, you have a chance to change things, or you can spend the rest of your life hating Lehnsherr and also hating yourself for being a little bit in love with him.”  
  
“Are you trying to tell me that I ought to enjoy being in love with the person who has essentially ruined my life?”  
  
Logan sighs. “I’ll telling you there’s no harm in taking pleasure where you can get it. You’re going to spend the rest of your life with that son of a bitch. _Your_ life will be easier if you let yourself want him. And, if you play your cards right, you might actually be able to turn it to your benefit. No one else can play Lehnsherr like you can—and I sure as hell wouldn’t judge you for doing what you need to do in order to stay sane.”  
  
“And I do so worry about your judgment.” Perhaps a nice cup of tea over lunch to talk about it: or perhaps they could skip that and get right on to how churned his gut feels, and how turning back away from Logan doesn’t do a thing to make it better. The man doesn’t know any of what he’s giving his opinion on: doing as Logan says would be nothing but a coward’s way out, and if he begins condoning Erik’s actions, Erik will take that as justification, and—  
  
Bloody hell, he is so, so tired already. Thinking about these things is exhausting, and his mind feels dull, swollen. Logan may be right—taking pleasure in what Erik does to him—the sexual aspect—may be the only way to stay sane. Already, he’s fracturing about the edges.  
  
And he’ll damn well shatter, because between bending and breaking, breaking is the better option. Erik can’t use something that’s broken. Bent—gods only know what he’d do then.  
  
“Does your daughter know what you do to keep her safe?”  
  
There’s little point in deluding himself into thinking he isn’t equating Logan’s situation to his own with David. But an answer is an answer, and if he can understand how Logan lives with himself when he has a child at home, it might be worth exposing this part of himself.  
  
“She ain’t my daughter.”  
  
What? What is she, then? Surely she’s not…? “But… you said she was sixteen.”  
  
“She is. Doesn’t make her my daughter.”  
  
By this point, nothing should shock him anymore. It’s always nice to know that he’s not entirely jaded—and it’s ten times worse to realize that there are still horrors in this world that have the ability to startle him with their character. “You’re—how can you—she’s only sixteen, and you think it’s acceptable to take her to bed—“  
  
And he wouldn’t even be reviled for it. The way things are now, sixteen isn’t so young. A good many bearers are married at sixteen, but it isn’t right, and he’s never before had to sit in a rail car with someone who thought so.  
  
Sweeping his arm out, Logan settles it along the top of his seat and stretches back, closing his eyes and tipping his head against the leather. With a boneless abandon, he begins to roll it languidly from side to side. “If you could hold off working yourself up into your righteous bullshit, I might just give you an explanation.”  
  
Righteous bullshit? Is that what they’re calling morals these days  
  
“I said I take care of her,” Logan explains after a moment’s pause. He still doesn’t raise his head. “And, no, I ain’t sleeping with her. More like a younger sister. My responsibility, though.” The hand on the back of the seat twitches, waving lazily. “Satisfied?”  
  
There’s no such thing anymore. But, for the moment, as well as he can be. “You didn’t answer my question.”  
  
Logan doesn’t bother to do anything more than hum absently: “Hmmm?”  
  
“Does she know what you do to keep her safe?”  
  
“It’s not dinner table conversation.”  
  
“And when my son is old enough? Should I do the same?”  
  
“You asking or you moralizing?”  
  
“I’m telling you that I think you’re nothing I ever want to be like.’  
  
Logan chuckles. “Good on you, Bub. I wouldn’t want to be like me either.”  
  
This is ridiculous. They’ll never get anywhere with this—not when they’re on such opposite sides of the survival instinct. It would be better to let Logan alone—leave him to sprawl all over his side of the railcar in relative peace in order to gain a little quiet of his own. It’s not likely he’ll have the chance again once he arrives in Genosha.  
  
“Didn’t say it was good or bad advice, Xavier. Just that it’s working for me.”  
  
“Is it?”  
  
Living at odds with what he knows to be right? Purposely choosing to overlook his leader’s flaws? Depending on a murderer for a livelihood? Logan is living in a constructed world, and if he ever has to acknowledge reality—there are theories on this sort of thing. Is it possible to build an entire viewpoint on the basis of what’s easiest to stomach while staying sane?  
  
“I’m alive,” Logan tells him, eyes still closed. “I have a home and a family. Don’t have much to complain about. Now, is there anything else you’d like to know, or can a guy get a nap around here?”  
  
He waves a hand in Logan’s direction before belatedly realizing that the man’s eyes remain closed. “By all means.” It will be a relief. The conversation hasn’t exactly been pleasant.  
  
Logan is… wrong, undeniably. But all his views—they’re all born out of survival instinct and looking at life just so, bent on getting through another day. He’s seeing what he has to see to make it through, and, by all appearances, he knows that.  
  
 _You could do it too_ his mind whispers. _Just like Logan. Let Erik take care of things. It wouldn’t be your fault._  
  
Wouldn’t it, though?  
  
It would. Erik has already ripped the known world apart in want of him. What would he do if Charles let him have whatever he desired without a fight? Some men simply have the privilege to do what Logan is doing.  
  
Charles is not one of them.  
  
More’s the pity—because he’s tired. And because that exhaustion isn’t something a nap can cure. He can lay his head down against the window, float off, occasionally drifting in and out, all the time with his eyes closed and his ears listening. There’s nothing. Only his own breathing, and, occasionally, David’s murmured nonsense sounds.  
  
He can have all of that, but a niggling feeling in his chest is all too clear on the fact that he can’t ever have a real portion of peace. Maybe not ever again. Not for real.


	8. Chapter 8

Genosha has always been stunning, and no matter what else Charles may feel about his arrival, his chest tightens up, strangled by awe, when he steps out of the carriage, Logan at his elbow. Shaw was quite likely half insane, but no one can fault the man’s taste in architecture, and he’d been obsessive about maintaining many of the old buildings in the main city—those built hundreds of years ago right after the storms. There are rumors that he designed many of those buildings himself—that the woman who held back the storms designed some too—and there’s the chance that those rumors might even be true.  
  
If they are, then Shaw at least had as much of an eye for beauty as he did for destruction.  
  
Most of the buildings are made of sandstone, granite, and brick, or some combination of the three, though there is the occasional discrepancy that favors another variety, or even wood. The architecture itself tends toward multi-storied buildings with wide, gaping windows, flooding the rooms with light day in and day out. That bit of the design is almost comical, in its own way: a deliberate taunt to the weather and to the storms that almost destroyed humanity. No longer will windows be blown out—not when mankind has achieved dominance over the elements. As arrogant as that is, though, all that glass makes for a spectacular city adept at catching and reflecting light, often imprinting the sunsets for minutes at a time onto the glass in bursts of lively color that set the city alive—or, sometimes, that set it to burning, if only in image.  
  
The streets themselves are concrete, laid out mostly for foot traffic, but with carriages in mind. The occasional car can still function perfectly well on them, but it’s hardly ever seen anymore. Somewhere along the line, this meant that the city council took it upon themselves to ensure that the roadways—unthreatened by tires and poisonous fumes, which were rumored to have caused the storms in the first place—would be pleasing to look at: there are now troughs for flowers along the roadways, overflowing with every kind of color imaginable, and some colors for which Charles would struggle to recall the term. He huffs a little at the thought, ignoring Logan’s glance. If he wishes to amuse himself over the lack of references to chartreuse in everyday conversation, then he damn well will.  
  
Doubtless, very few people would be surprised to learn that it’s the palace that steals the show, so to speak. This is—oh, goodness, what, the third time now?—that Charles has seen it, but seeing it tower up over the other buildings in the middle of town always evokes a certain respect for splendor somewhere in the part of his brain that is wired to appreciated grandeur. Logically, it’s terribly egotistical to feel the need to put the palace smack at the center of a city: Westchester’s is just outside the city walls on a hill overlooking the city—but it does make quite the landmark, rising out of the stone walls that ring the entire way around the base of the mound on which it’s set. Genosha’s palace, though: very pretty, very stately—and also a very efficient fighting fortress if one knows what to look for.  
  
Ringed as Genosha’s palace is by the town, a force trying to take the palace would have to make their way through countless streets bordered by buildings that provide vantage points that a sniper would practically salivate over. And when all it takes to trap a force of men is to block off the beginning and end of a street, sealing them between two walls of buildings—well, a force had best be very well prepared before willingly marching into a situation in which that could happen. Should they manage to make it to the palace itself, they would then have to find a way to either scale the walls—twenty feet high in the lowest places—while being shot at from the top of the platform on which the building itself sits.  
  
Taking Genosha is, in short, a tactical nightmare.  
  
And he and Erik managed it.  
  
They’d walked just where he’s walking now, through the gates, though this time he’s flanked this time by Logan and a truly superfluous number of guards, mostly for the purpose of holding back the rows of pressing spectators who. More than likely, they haven’t yet discerned whether he’s a prisoner, the husband of their monarch, or the vilest kind of traitor who stood to sell out his own people for his personal safety.  
  
Managing to avoid only one out of the three doesn’t really make for a winning record.  
  
Hm. Better luck next time—that’s not a nice thought. Is he hysterical? This—oh, he’d almost like to laugh at remembering how Erik tripped right there on the corner of the gate, how he’d caught Erik’s arm. So, maybe not hysterical, but by no means of sound mind. Perhaps…? Interesting thought: if he’s a bit unbalanced, a court might not hold him responsible for an assassination attempt. And he wouldn’t be the first person in history to attempt to bring a dagger to bed on his wedding night.  
  
“Better lock the gate behind me,” he tells Logan with false cheer. Speaking is mostly the better option when compared to spending any time at all examining the faces of the people who have come to witness such a lurid spectacle.  
  
Being faced with their judgment, pity, horror—a whole soup of noxious emotions—isn’t even the worst of it. Ha, no—he slows down just to watch Logan huff in annoyance, and also maybe just so he won’t have to concentrate so _entirely_ on what’s really gnawing at his thoughts. Not that he can push those thoughts away entirely: far worse than the emotions of any anonymous person, is, as seems so common lately, something wrapped in Erik’s purview. Erik has literally marched him out for all of Genosha’s people to see, holding a baby in his arms, and pretending that he isn’t entirely humiliated by the spectacle that he makes. Whether Erik is attempting to shame him or to show off what he’s won, it’s difficult to say—in all fairness, probably the later, since Erik is strangely not in the habit of publically airing their mutual grievances—though neither is particularly pleasant.  
  
“Wouldn’t have thought you’d _want_ to remind me to lock you in,” Logan mutters, reaching out and grabbing Charles’ elbow, just to pull him along a few paces faster.  
  
Unfortunate, that: he’d been hoping Logan wouldn’t correct his dawdling. At this point there’s little chance of him being able to dart off into the crowd, but the prospect of being shut up within the walls is disagreeable, and, illogical or not, those last few moments before the gates close seem precious and worthy of extension.  
  
It may be Erik who can feel metal, but Charles shivers against the itch of confinement that races up his spine when those metal gates slide shut.  
  
Not that he’ll show it: “Oh, I’d feel rather sorry if Erik took the mistake out on your hide,” he answers sweetly. Logan has earned the scowl that etches itself into his face. With any luck, the emotions behind it will be as grating as the look says that they are.  
  
Truly, it’s good to know he can rile a man like Logan, who probably prides himself on being nearly unflappable.  
  
He shouldn’t. Not quite. He never met Charles Xavier before now.  
  
Rolling his shoulder, Charles rotates his waist and snaps his arm out of Logan’s grip, walking half sideways in an attempt to make it very clear that no, there will be no touching, because even if he must take it from Erik, he is not obligated to take it from anyone else, thank you.  
  
Even more importantly—or at least relevantly—if he’s going to be locked up here and made to play house, he will most assuredly be making life hell for all those who are willing to assist Erik in his objectives. Erik always did tell him that he could lower the temperature of the room with what he leaves unsaid. _Too good-hearted to do it often_ Erik had added _but very capable._  
  
Too true. He was, after all, raised by his mother, who could ice out a room with more efficiency than an Arctic storm. If that upbringing will help him now, so be it.  
  
Once they’ve moved through the gates into the bailey, David apparently chooses the moment to decide that he’s had enough of the proceedings. He’s not alone in his opinion, but it is quite inconvenient for Charles to have a fussing infant in his arms while he’s doing his best to meet the situation with a good, stiff upper lip.  
  
But… this is his son, and if he needs soothing—there was never any question that he’d receive it.  
  
“Quite right, darling,” he murmurs, leaning David back a few inches in order to look him full in the face. “I don’t like this any more than you do.”  
  
At his father’s voice, David’s face pinches, dimpling the baby fat that will cling to his cheeks for a good few years yet. His expression sets his chin to wobbling, bouncing the fat of his cheeks along with it, remarkably similar to a very vexed chipmunk.  
  
Talking does the trick, though, and he stops fussing, content instead to stare back at his father and spew forth a long string of garbled syllables that means absolutely nothing intelligible.  
  
Goodness, he’s getting so big: the buzz in his mind is very near to forming words. His son—his son is _wonderful._  
  
“So…” Charles begins again once they’ve reached the steps of the palace. “Am I to be locked in the royal suite straight through until Erik returns?”  
  
Logan grunts in response. Hours upon hours of mutual coexistence have dulled his tolerance—which helpfully means that every word spoken is similar to drilling down into an open nerve.  
  
Marvelous. If ever there were an opportunity to harass Erik’s lackeys, this is it.  
  
“Has Erik put you on guard duty for that too?” he asks pleasantly. It’s worth it, to see Logan twitch. “Do tell me you’ll be relieved of it when Erik returns: I can only imagine how terribly awkward it would be for you were you to hear the conception of the next royal hei—“  
  
“Damn it all to hell, Xavier, _shut up_.”  
  
Breaking point identified. Excellent.  
  
“Oh dear, does that make you uncomfortable?” He bounces David lightly, pressing a kiss to his forehead. “I just thought that for someone who’s so very comfortable with the prospect of unwilling sex, you wouldn’t be disconcerted at all to hear it taking place—“  
  
If Erik were here, he’d probably have Logan on the ground bleeding for how he closes his fingers around Charles’ arm, yanking him up short. His own body clips around quickly, blocking Charles’ path and putting Logan’s back to the palace for the moment, in some ways more effective than the walls themselves. Walls don’t have metal fused to their spines. Walls don’t even _have_ spines.  
  
“You’ve got an axe to grind, I _get_ it,” he snaps, giving Charles a little shake. As serious as he is—eyes narrowed and shoulders hunched in, drawing him and Charles closer, presumably worried that sound won’t carry—he’s still careful of David, keeping his grip on the arm not taking most of the baby’s weight. Even his fingers, tight as they are, won’t leave bruises.  
  
All in all, better than what happened with Erik in the hallway a few days ago. The bruises that he’s carrying from that debacle are truly remarkable in color. Logan, for all his faults, has avoided adding to the rainbow.  
  
Not that any of that will do him any real credit. “Do you? Do you _really_?” If Logan did understand, he wouldn’t allow it. He’s never had to reconcile what it is to be a man while possessing a function that society says makes him weaker. “I was considered a worthy leader in deed and appearance right up until someone got a good look at what was under my clothes, and then none of what I’d done mattered anymore. Do you ‘get’ _that_?”  
  
Erik certainly doesn’t. Or maybe he does. Might be that he just doesn’t care in the face of a whole damn lot of lust, an unhealthy terror at the prospect of loss, and a cursed bond that’s literally incited a war to topple the known world.  
  
Logan steps back, wrinkling his nose. But… he does look the slightest bit guilty, just in the creases at the edges of his eyes. “We’ve had this talk already, Xavier.”  
  
“Yes. And I don’t think you’ve heard me at all.”  
  
No one is going to hear him. That becomes increasingly clear the deeper they go into the palace, where the staff regards him with the blank demeanor he never liked or tolerated from his own staff. While they might not gape like the people outside the gate, he’s a telepath, and he can hear the mixed swirls of their emotions just beneath the surface—and that perfect, thoughtless mask that they wear disconcerts him when the emotions themselves show it for the lie that it is. No matter what they feel, they won’t act on it: they’ll leave him to what he’s to become, and if they hear anything when walking past the bedroom door at night, they’ll pretend in the morning that it was nothing at all.  
  
The entirety of this court could watch Erik fuck him right on the throne, and no one would do a thing to stop it.  
  
Logan stops him at the door to the royal suite, splaying his hand out on the door just over the handle. “Try not to make trouble.”  
  
He arches an eyebrow. “Who, me?”  
  
“I mean it, Xavier. If I have to come back in the middle of the night to drag your ass out because you’ve set the place on fire—“  
  
“Oh, I’d hardly do that. I’d wait until Erik was inside with me at the very least.”  
  
In one sense, there’s actually something horrifically liberating in being a press-ganged spouse. Mainly: death threats must be tolerated, since he made no claims to loyalty in the first place.  
  
Pity, though, that such liberty doesn’t necessarily mean he’s taken _seriously._  
  
“Sure,” Logan mutters, rolling his eyes and letting up on the door. He crosses his arms messily, practically radiating just how little he wants to have this conversation. “Whatever you say.”  
  
“Oh? Well, in that case—“  
  
As quick as he’d crosses his arms, Logan tosses a hand back out to yank open the door to the suite. “In that case, I’ll thank you to stay put and do whatever it is you royals do all day.” He nods toward the room. “Now. Before I do something I’ll regret, like toss you in there myself.”  
  
“I think that would be highly inadvisable.”  
  
That earns him a sardonic grin. “Yeah, I’d say so. Think you’d better do as you’re told then, huh?”  
  
“Inadvisable for _you_.”  
  
A nod. “Damn right. And I think you’d feel guilty if Lehnsherr ripped me apart because of you.”  
  
Most certainly. But it might be hard to recognize under the rest of the guilt that’s a perpetual lump of hurt in his chest.  
  
His lack of answer is answer enough for Logan: “That’s what I thought.” Almost a drawl—now, that’s nearly downright offensive. There’s calling someone’s bluff, and then there’s gloating about it. Rather unkind, all things considered.  
  
Shifting David to his other hip—his body really is getting rather heavy—he spares a tired smile for the baby’s happy babble, pushing a curl out of his son’s face before he finally does as Logan says and turns toward the door. “Have a pleasant evening, Logan,” he says as he goes, because even if this situation is unpleasantness personified, he doesn’t have to entirely disagreeable.  
  
Logan is adept at that for both of them: he grunts and shuts the door behind Charles with no further preamble whatsoever.  
  
Appalling, the way Erik’s men behave. If this had been a year ago, when they were hunting Shaw, that behavior might have been different—Alex had never been precisely cultured, and Sean sometimes… yes, well, it hardly matters now.  
  
And it matters even less when he realizes who, exactly, Erik has positioned to greet him.  
  
 _There’s a traitor among you_ Erik had said, and Charles had heard the words at the time, but he’d been about two steps past suicide, and he hadn’t had time to _think_. Ha. To have that luxury _now._ Wouldn’t it have been better never to know? Erik—he must have thought a familiar face would be soothing—  
  
Charles screws his eyes shut and looks away, hands balled into fists. He should be beyond this, but….  
  
“Well,” he half-whispers. Appallingly weak: he says it again, better, as he must be, when strength is something he needs too badly to have. He can’t afford to be weak: “Well.” An improvement, at least. “I must say: I never would have guessed.”  
  
Angel does have the good grace to look ashamed: her lips push together, pursing, and though she crosses her arms defensively, it has the air of a little girl not quite comfortable in her own skin. Lies will do that. So will considering the blood on one’s hands, that will never wash off—he’s laid awake far too many nights thinking that himself, and perhaps he will tell her that, ask if—  
  
But it would be worth very little. Easier to blink against the stinging in his eyes, to run a hand through David’s hair and wait, leaving her the opportunity to explain, if, indeed, there is anything that she can say to make this better.  
  
A laughable thought. There is nothing. But she could at least _try_.  
  
“I think you can do good here,” is what she finally settles on, though it comes out choked. Poor girl is trying for defensive, but there’s a plea to her sound, and her eyes are too rounded, and she is too hesitant to meet his eyes. How did he never see this before? “I—I thought it would be better.”  
  
Ah, yes, that suggestion she made in the war room: the idea that he could influence Erik while by his side, and that it would be the better option when compared to continued fighting. Nice that she’d hoped to convince him to surrender peacefully. Presumably, then, she doesn’t want to see him beaten down.  
  
“And do you still think so?” There is a sofa not too far away, and he takes advantage of the arrangement to sink down on it, which is really quite fortuitous, as his legs are shaking to a disgraceful degree.  
  
“Yes.” Too quick a response, and too forceful for _that_ to be true, but it wouldn’t be much good to call her on it at this point, when she’s already done her damage.  
  
“Were you helping him when my wife was killed?”  
  
Each of her wings twitch, and it’s really quite beautiful, in an odd, guilty fashion. “No. I didn’t—“  
  
“But you were willing to help the people responsible.” Quiet. Just a statement of a fact, while he rocks his son.  
  
“It wasn’t like that—“  
  
“My son has no mother because of what they did.”  
  
“I never meant—“  
  
“I’m a widower because of them.”  
  
“Don’t—“  
  
“Too much truth for you?”  
  
This time, she doesn’t answer, but her breathing has ratcheted up, and under the light shirt that she’s wearing—heavy fabric isn’t conducive to gossamer wings—there’s no hiding it. If he were so inclined, he might see some appeal in her heaving breasts—Moira had such a lovely figure—but… that’s something he’s long since forgone. Resenting what Angel has done is quite well and good, but Erik is not the type to share—he was party to Moira’s assassination, for gods’ sake—and Angel doesn’t deserve to _die_.  
  
“I find,” he begins again, more wistful this time, “that we can talk ourselves into almost anything, so long as the conversation is only limited to ourselves. Once we’ve someone else to point out the folly in our ideas—that’s when our own reasoning unravels.”  
  
To her credit, she doesn’t shrink away. “We’re dying out. The population is dropping, and humans—they hate us. Something had to be done. Lehnsherr isn’t perfect, but he offered the best hope—”  
  
“Good enough to betray your country?”  
  
She tilts her chin back. “Yes.”  
  
“I should hope so. Even in Westchester, that sort of treason is punishable by death during wartime.”  
  
“And would you have had the backbone to give that order?” she snaps.  
  
She could not have picked a better—or worse—gauntlet. Of all the things he’d like to forget—but no help for it now, unfortunately: “I have before.”  
  
That does the trick: she goes still, wings hovering in the air for a quarter of a minute or so before folding back into her skin with captivating delicacy. Her eyes, too, have gone soft, and she stares at him with unabashed confusion, and with the kind of bewilderment that he is, unfortunately, very used to by now: people so often mistake mercy for weakness.  
  
“The one time I passed that sentence,” he tells her, picking his tongue over each word before letting it go—an endeavor that would be so very much easier if his lungs hadn’t decided that air is unnecessary, “I did not have it publicized. A very select few people knew of the ruling. Frankly, I never expected to have it carried out. It was only to make my views on the person’s return to Westchester—and her crimes within it—very clear.”  
  
Angel doesn’t move. She hardly blinks; her hands remain clasped tightly in front of her. “Who was it?” she asks, rapt with attention, to the point that she’s leaning forward to hear.  
  
Charles closes his eyes. How very much he’d never wanted to revisit this.  
  
“My sister.”  
  
Easy to say, less easy to let it sink into his bones like it did that night when he’d found Moira, when he’d known that Erik had to have been involved—when he’d known the last of whatever peace he’d had a chance at having had slipped away.  
  
Angel must understand on some level: calm though she is—he will admire her resolution, if nothing else—one hand has drifted to her mouth, pressing feathery light over her lips and hiding visual evidence of any small sounds she might make. It would appear that she comprehends exactly what that ruling must have cost him.  
  
So much as she can, anyway.  
  
“If she’d returned…” So quiet, only half said, really, “Would you have carried it out?”  
  
His mouth sticks, but: “I don’t know.” Nothing but the truth.  
  
His own law would have demanded it. The execution would have been just. Yet… his heart remembers the golden-haired child that he’d raised and loved, better than his brain recalls that justice is what it is, regardless of the players involved. But—could he have sent Raven before a firing squad or under the headman’s axe? That beautiful child, six years his junior, who was for years his only comfort, whom he’d taught to read, whom he’d rocked to sleep—whom, despite everything, he will never stop loving.  
  
Perhaps he could have done it. But, if he had, he never again would have seen the world in such bright colors.  
  
“I’m sorry.”  
  
That’s something, anyway—and Angel sounds as though she truly means it. Her face is overlaid with a mild grief—not deep enough for a personal investment—but, maybe, just a little, an understanding of what he was willing to sacrifice for his kingdom—and what she’s helped take from him.  
  
“For what?” If he’s ever before felt this tired, he can’t recall: he leans his head back against the cushions, lingering over the weight of David in his arms, soft and warm.  
  
“That you had to give that order.”  
  
“No one forced me to give it.” A novelty, that—these days, anyway.  
  
“Maybe not directly.”  
  
True. This, though—it’s nothing he can change, so why revisit it? He will see Raven soon enough, and whether or not she’s told Erik that her own brother ordered her execution, the meeting promises to offer more than enough of this kind of talk.  
  
Sighing, he pushes up off the couch, doing his best to ignore the strain it draws through his muscles—he’s run himself ragged these last months, to the point where he’s lost weight and muscle—and turns to make for what he supposes will be the bedroom. That is not to preclude, of course, the possibility that he’s about to walk into a lavishly decorated bathroom or, gods forbid, a closet. The rooms are certainly sumptuous enough for it, all smoothed gray stone—granite on the walls—and a polished—he’d guess marble—floor. The furniture itself is cherry wood, and most of it is grand, to the point that it’s been carved for decoration, though it still manages to appear comfortable and functional. Very stately, the whole thing. The wide, cavernous windows certainly add to the general aura, waist high and running the length of the left wall, save for where they’re interrupted by a door that opens out onto a balcony: the windows lean slightly out over a lush garden, making room for the cushioned window seats—red velvet cushions, same as all the others in the room, as well as the curtains—that stretch beneath them.  
  
It’s altogether too much for him—not like the welcoming comfort of Westchester’s wood paneling—but he certainly won’t be able to complain that his accommodations aren’t adequate. Just impersonal. And not to his tastes.  
  
Granted, they’re hardly the greatest thing about this situation that doesn’t suit his tastes.  
  
For the moment, however, it seems that he’s in luck: he guessed right, and the door he takes opens to a bedroom—and, yes, as he’d hoped, there’s a smaller doorway to the side of the room, and one more push opens that too, allowing him access to the nursery that he isn’t surprised to find. More than likely, it had originally been a closet, but Erik would have known there would be no relegating David to a room down the hall, where he could be watched by nurses, rather than his father.  
  
At this point, he can hardly fathom letting his son out of his sight, let alone into the care of someone else.  
  
“I—Lehnsherr said to make certain that you had anything you needed.” Oh. Angel. She’s still here. Apparently hard to shake, too, to the point where she’s followed him into the bedroom. Charming: he very barely manages not to grimace.  
  
Not wanting anyone else in this room is mere foolishness. Who has or hasn’t seen it will make no difference in what will happen on that bed. But… the idea of it, of them knowing what the place looks like, being able to that much more accurately imagine him on his wedding night: it’s akin to someone staring at him, lodging their judgment under his skin until he just wants to _scratch_.  
  
“I daresay he’s thought of everything,” Charles mutters, not entirely succeeding to keep the resentment out of his voice. “And more besides.”  
  
The chessboard that caught his eye back out in the living quarters had been a nice touch, perched as it was on a table between two armchairs and positioned nicely in front of the very large fireplace. There’s little doubt that Erik is hoping they might play, once he arrives.  
  
Gods, and what will that look like? He can’t… turn around, face Angel—not with the idea that—  
  
He breathes out and moves forward to settle David, who’s blessedly gone mostly to sleep, into the crib before him.  
  
But—if—  
  
He’s two steps from falling apart, and he _cannot._  
  
Breathe in. Breathe out.  
  
If only it were easy to just Not. Think. To consider—how will it look when he’s eight months pregnant, seated in that armchair, the fire going—no alcohol, doubtless. Will they play at chess? By then, will he be so dreadfully desperate for anything to do that he’ll be willing to let Erik tempt him out for a game, just as they used to do?  
  
A chess game, like old times in that tent.  
  
As if it could ever be the same. Charles scrubs a hand over his face, against the—ah, gods, the lure of the familiar—he can very nearly feel Erik’s hope hovering over that area of the room. Always here with that nagging wish that the chess set will be something Charles likes, that they used to enjoy together, and that things will settle, be what he wants them to be.  
  
No, no, no. Never that—but it could be. David is peering up at him, blinking sleepily and acquiescing to having his father pull a blanket over him—and in a few years, there might be more children, and how will he ever say no to Erik in the face of _that_?  
  
“My Lord.” Oh? Does he still own that title? “Are you all right?”  
  
All right? Who the hell even asks him that anymore?  
  
Pasting a smile on his face, he gives David’s cheek one last fond brush with the backs of his fingers before turning to face her. “Of course. Why would you think otherwise?”  
  
She frowns. “You’re shaking.”  
  
And so he is. Funny, that he hadn’t noticed.  
  
“It’s nothing.”  
  
Her concern doesn’t fade at his reassurances, but neither does she push. Small miracles—but he’ll take them as they come, and if he can get them. “If you need anything…” She trails off in favor of searching him out with her wide, dark eyes.  
  
A bit unkindly, he can’t help taking satisfaction in the guilt embedded there. For what she’s done to him, for betraying her nation, for the hurt she’s seeing in him now—it could be any of those, and it could be all.  
  
Bloody useless, though, as much as he hates himself for it—but, satisfying, to know she isn’t emerging from this unscathed herself. Those who have hurt him—wanting them to hurt—he’s only human in his desires. Very human. It’s the curse of the human condition: vengeance.  
  
Ironic, how Erik is all too human in ways he’d like to forget.  
  
“I know,” he finishes for her. “If I need anything, I’ll inform the soldier outside the rooms to call for you.” No, he won’t. But, then, he won’t be needing anything.  
  
Though she nods, backing away, she’s hesitant in her step; her eyes don’t leave him until the last possible moment when she’s clearing the door of the nursery. Her footsteps echo from the bedroom, clacking on the wood, offering that ever-present promise that one word would call her back.  
  
What’s this, then? A hint of attachment to him? Perhaps—perhaps it had never been anything personal—hadn’t she said as much? He _was_ her ruler, and for her to feel a duty to him now, when she helped put him here—  
  
It matters very little in the scheme of things, but, though the outcome would have been the same regardless of her motives, better men than he have fallen prey to their egos in such a way as to feel gratified at the knowledge that their subject’s betrayal was never out of hate for _him_.  
  
Perhaps it will be some small comfort when Erik has him on his back. Perhaps it will make all of it worse.  
  
“There will be people in to check on you every hour until you sleep,” Angel calls from the other room, where—a quick burst of telepathy—she’s paused at the door. And—oh, dear, the poor girl is worried that Erik will think her negligent, and—full of surprises—that Charles will kill himself with no one near. It would seem that news of his previous attempt has managed to leak further than Erik would no doubt have liked. They ought to know that Erik wouldn't leave him unattended unless he were certain that suicide was not in the realm of possibility, but there's no faulting them for their worry: it would be their heads if even a hair on his own is harmed.  
  
Bully for Erik: let _him_ explain why he’s marrying a mad ex-king who’s inclined to off himself _and_ Erik, and who doesn’t even have the benefit of childbearing. Come to think of it, what _is_ Erik telling people about why he’s marrying a non-bearer? Surely he isn’t flouting every law on the books without giving any explanation at all?  
  
“Sir?” Oh, Angel. Still there. “Did you hear me?”  
  
Her worry spikes in his head—oh, and for the love of—he would not kill himself like _that_ , honestly, what is the girl thinking?  
  
“Yes. Check-in every hour.”  
  
For monitoring or for helping? Both, most likely.  
  
At the obvious indication that he’s given her all he plans to, she finally turns and makes her exit, closing the door to the bedroom—a large wooden structure, carved with fruits and flowers along the cross boards—or so he would assume from the sound, though he can’t see, ensconced as he is in the nursery.  
  
And here he will stay.  
  
Did Erik really have hope that Charles would sleep in their marriage bed before it became absolutely necessary?

No, he thinks, eyeing the patch of floor to the right of David’s crib. The floor will do nicely. His son’s room, at least, will be something pleasant.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, went and saw DOFP on the 22nd (thank you, England, for earlier release dates). Gah. That is all. ALL the feelings.
> 
> Also, apologies: as was helpfully pointed out to me, I actually posted the wrong version of Chapter Seven, which has one major detail that conflicts with this chapter. In the proper version, Logan does not show Charles his claws on the train. I'd edited that out for reasons that will be really obvious after reading this chapter. So, yes, pretend that didn't happen, since, in the correct version of the chapter, it was never supposed to have occurred. There are also a couple of other small differences between the versions, but that was the major thing. *facepalm* Really sorry!

Erik was not, as it turns out, lying when he promised that Charles would be consulted on manners pertaining to their holy blessed union or whatever horrid and utterly false title it’s going to carry. A steady stream of people parade through his rooms during the next week—or try to. They all seem very hesitant to breach the sanctuary that the bedroom has unspokenly become—or, so they think. A failure to enter the bedroom leaves them with no indication that he has, in fact, taken up residence in the nursery in a veritable nest of blankets, sheets, and pillows that he found in the bedroom closet.  
  
The bed remains untouched.  
  
Angel, it quickly becomes apparent, is far more unsettled by his actions than he is. She coaxes and she reasons, brings him food and promises it would be more agreeable at the table, threatens to tell Erik and frowns when he laughs, and—she’s tried everything, and upon being met with the blankness that mostly makes up his regard for her these days, she’s turned herself to soothing the feathers he ruffles by refusing to exit the nursery.  
  
The hesitancy of his visitors to enter the bedroom has, laughably—in some sense—left them mostly stranded at the door to the living space, or, on occasion, in the space itself, if Angel deigns to allow them entrance. As for that, it depends on her mood, on who it is—on the weather for all he knows.  
  
He’ll leave that to her, for as much as she cares… he _doesn’t._  
  
At first, he had found himself rather confused at the prospect that Erik has left a traitor to mind him. It’s old common adage that, though a traitor within an enemy’s ranks is a useful thing indeed, traitors are never to be trusted once they join your own: if they betrayed their own people, they will betray you with even less thought or care.  
  
It had taken him to perhaps the third day to realize that, though Angel may have been placed in charge of seeing to his comfort and to dealing with visitors once they enter the suite, it’s Logan who decides which callers may or may not gain access to his rooms in general.  
  
How very much it must grate on the man to being doing exactly as Charles has taunted: standing guard outside the doors of the royal suite.  
  
That is, Charles bloody well _hopes_ it’s grating on him.  
  
And so, on the fifth day after his arrival, it is really quite a pleasant surprise to find that he’s irritated Logan to the point where he feels the need to intervene in Charles’… whatever it is called when one curls up next to his son’s crib in a mess of blankets and immerges only to care for his son or to use the bathroom.  
  
He hears Logan before he sees him. Entwined as he is with a large gray blanket, hidden beneath it until the air he’s breathing is warm and moist, he still catches the snapped, “Stop bringing him food in there,” that rockets into the room from the bedroom beyond.  
  
Interesting. So far, no one has attempted to prod him into moving with anything more than the utmost respect. Trust Logan to be the one to break that cycle.  
  
The door to the nursery slams open, smacking into the wall—precocious of Logan; Erik will be most displeased if the wall is damaged—before sharp, heavy footfalls approach. Charles has just enough time to brace for the shock of light that pierces into his eyes before Logan rips off the blanket and tosses it aside.  
  
“Get up.” Nothing more than that: demanding and to the point.  
  
While the method of delivery may be admirable, that does not means he intends to offer Logan his cooperation. Anything but.  
  
Logan, though—who the hell is this man, who thinks he can just reach down and grab a hold, hauling Charles up to his feet? Charles has never particularly thought of himself as a gods-appointed sovereign—never quite bought into that argument—but _some_ respect is due to him as the King of Westchester, and this? Is not it.  
  
Snarling, he takes a swing at Logan, and—is the man _smiling_?  
  
“There ya go.” Though he’s put Charles on his feet, he waits before releasing him, hanging on until Charles gets his legs under him. “Knew you were in there somewhere. And I gotta tell you, Xavier, it’s downright pathetic if _this_ is how you deal with things.”  
  
Does he? How nice for him. Snarling, he grabs Logan’s wrists and yanks them off his arms, tossing Logan’s touch aside. “Like you know anything about it.”  He _works_ for Erik. The only thing he could possibly know is how to perpetuate abuses like this.  
  
“Don’t assume you know everything.”  
  
Maybe not, but the man is continuing on with his smile, and if that isn’t just the most infuriating thing—  
  
“Instead of lying down and doing your best impression of halfway to corpse, use that big brain of yours, and find a way to work with what you’ve got. You get me?”  
  
“I get that I would very much like to see you trip and fall on your own sword, yes.”  
  
That grin grows wider, and Logan spreads his hands out to the side, inviting. “Not put it in my ribs yourself?”  
  
No. He does have _some_ principles. “I tend to frown on murder.”  
  
“You do, don’t you?” He looks thoughtful, quirking a cheek up and watching, worse than a little boy taunting another in the schoolyard. “Bet you couldn’t win a sword fight if your life depended on it. Too soft. Sitting behind a desk, playing with the lives of other men—”  
  
Does he really think—? He has _no right_. “I’ve been on campaign multiple times.” One step forward. Logan’s eyes flick to Charles’ feet, but he doesn’t move—only waits, giving Charles room to decide. He might just live to regret that.  
  
“I’m sure you have. Sitting back in the tent, far away from the battle—“  
  
“Not everyone is as bloodthirsty as _you_ —“  
  
“That a yes? You just sit there, Xavier, letting people die for you?”  
  
One of his muscles jerks his leg forward, and he’s near about to snap back, but—he exhales heavily; inhales: “I didn’t say that.” Calm and control—he’s always won battles that way, and a mouthy, carnage-loving soldier isn’t going to provoke him.  
  
“Nah. You don’t really _say_ much of anything. Just a lot of words.”  
  
And then—did he really just—?  
  
Logan has tossed a sword down between them.  
  
How… unexpected.  
  
“What’s that for?” he asks, angling his head back and staring down his nose at Logan. It’s difficult when the man is so much taller than he is.  
  
Logan laughs. “Don’t even know what a sword _is_ , Xavier? I didn’t think you were _that_ buried in your books.”  
  
This man is _insufferable._ “I know what it _is_. I even know how to care for it, which is clearly more than you know, considering how carelessly you tossed it out just now.”  
  
All he gets in return is an amused huff. And then: “Pick it up.”  
  
“Excuse me?” His eyebrow feels somewhere around his hairline. Surely Logan is not suggesting what it sounds like he’s suggesting—? And, if he is, has he overlooked Charles’ current state of dress? He’s barefoot, in pajamas: in no condition to fight.  
  
“Show me just what those books taught you, _Professor_.”  
  
He can’t be serious. No, he _is_ : no one who is joking looks so terribly _smug._  
  
“It wasn’t books that taught me to fight. That was long hours of practice and training—“  
  
“Uh-huh, yeah, whatever.” Logan waves him off, rolling his eyes and, once again, nodding toward the sword lying between them. For the first time, Charles looks—really _looks_ —and notices that Logan has another sword on his own hip. Does he always carry two? “Pick it up.”  
  
“And if I don’t?”  
  
A shrug. “Then you don’t.” But then that entirely impudent smirk is back, and it’s maddening. If this man were punched in the face, it would be no hardship.  
  
Or, if he were disarmed.  
  
“I don’t believe violence is a way to solve most things.”  
  
“No.” The grin turns lazy. “It’s doing the fighting _yourself_ that you don’t believe in. You send others out for you. I don’t think you _can_ fight—just a soft, pretty academic king who’s had some luck and called it strategy.”  
  
Engaging with this is a horrible idea but—somehow, he’s already gotten the sword in his hands.  
  
And the thing is—it feels _good_.  
  
As much as he dislikes violence, he grew up knowing he would one day hold a kingdom. He was six years old when someone first tried to assassinated him. After that, he had someone teach him to throw knives. By the time he was twelve, he could use a broadsword with passable competence—with proficiency, given his size. As he got older, he got better—had to, living with someone like Cain—and while it’s true that he’s no soldier—a slightly above-average fighter, but not spectacular, not like Erik—he can defend himself in an altercation. As much as he prefers strategy and the more academic side of warfare, he _can_ fight.  
  
And he’s damn ready to show that to Logan.  
  
There’s also the sense that familiarity breeds comfort: the bite of metal in his hand is a little like childhood. Like understanding he hasn’t lost everything quite yet. It’s not as good as knives: he’s better with those than a sword, more fitted as knives are to his size and strength, but the comfort springs up from the sword anyway, lingering, almost languid, in his chest.  
  
“Hey, pretty good. You at least know how to hold it—“  
  
Charles’ sword slices through the air, whistling sharply; Logan dodges. “Get out,” Charles snarls. “I won’t do this in front of my son.” It’s nothing short of a miracle that David hasn’t woken. Is it a matter of projection, sending his own son to sleep--?  
  
No time to think on it: at the warning of the first blow, Logan backs up, straight out through the door and into the bedroom.  
  
Now here? _Here_ would be a _joy_ to decimate. This room—he can’t put into words how much he hates this room, how Erik planned it, how he’s left Charles to it for days on end like a pretty toy that will keep, and if a sword goes through that thrice-cursed bed, it will be no problem of Charles’.  
  
By the time Charles has gotten through the door, Logan has drawn his own sword and is standing in the middle of the room, poised, ready. His stance is a solid one—well-balanced and well-considered, obviously indicative of someone with training. No apparent weaknesses—only the potential for the sort that are revealed through an actual fight.  
  
Charles swings again, coming up hard on his right, but Logan blocks him, parrying and then taking the strike Charles throws back up at him again. Metal screeches on metal, swords meeting, again and again and again, but each time Logan throws him off, working his feet in a near-dance that carries him about the room—and, damn it, but there’s a sense that Logan is _letting_ himself be backed around the room, effortlessly avoiding the furniture, the bastard.  
  
Fine. If that’s how he wants to play it….  
  
Charles draws back, breathing hard, and waits. The sword burns in his hand, linked immediately down into his chest, melting his heart into liquid and leaving it to slosh about, more active than it’s been in days. The feel of it—the ebb, and the sensation of fluidity—  
  
“Let’s make this more interesting,” Logan suggests, grinning. “First to yield. You win, I leave you alone in your little cave to do what you like until Lehnsherr gets back; I win, you haul your ass out there and meet with the wedding planner.”  
  
As if he’d take such a deal: “I only bet if I’m reasonably certain I can win.”  
  
The bastard looks far too delighted at the implications of that. “You saying you don’t think you can beat me? Why, Xavier—“  
  
“Go to hell. That’s not what I said.”  
  
“Then why not—?“  
  
“ _No._ ”  
  
Logan is hardly deterred: “Fine. If I can’t make you yield in under two minutes, I’ll concede—how’s that?”  
  
That? _That_ is far more to his tastes. Especially because—well, no need to let Logan know the exact details of his reasoning yet. It’s enough that _he_ knows: this is one deal Logan literally _cannot_ win.  
  
“Acceptable terms, I’ll say. Clock’s on the wall. Start when the hand strikes twelve.”  
  
Waiting is part of the game too: the fifteen or so seconds before the start time, when they merely stare at each other, Logan’s face curled with confidence and sheer amusement, tinged red with the rush of the fight—and Charles can feel his own face heat, either from anger or exertion. Likely a little of both: Logan is taunting him, even now, already sizing him up, and he’ll be damned if he provides such an easy target as the man obviously thinks he’s going to be. He’s small, but he’s not helpless.  
  
When Logan comes rushing at him as the clock ticks past twelve, Charles dodges, pivoting hard on one foot and drop-stepping with the other, catching Logan’s sword off the edge of his and shoving it away hard. Logan lashes back out on the upswing, and any instructor would most certainly reprimand Charles for the way he utterly fails to minimize his motion and economize his energy in parrying; if this were a fight that called for duration, it might matter. But this—to only last two minutes: he won’t need his energy past that, and it’s bloody _amazing_ to feel those vibrations up his arm, physically exerting and indelibly _real_.  
  
Logan is good: there’s no denying that. Much larger than Charles too, which makes the shoulder he takes to his own, knocking him back and off balance, all the worse. It sends him into a stumble, but his best skill in sword fighting was always his footwork, and he catches himself back up quickly enough, able to hop over the foot that Logan tries to hook around his own.  
  
Two seconds later and he’d have been on his back.  
  
“You trying to dance or fight, Xavier?”  
  
But Charles only laughs, parrying again and landing a blow of his own. Since they’ve called terms, Logan is certainly fighting harder: Charles couldn’t beat this man in a full-out fight. He’s not too proud to admit that, if only to himself—though never, ever to Logan.  
  
“Both,” he snaps, glancing up at the clock. One minute to go.  
  
They’re getting sloppy. What was originally a sword-fight is descending into the edges of a brawl, fists flying as much as swords—which makes sense, actually. If Logan punches him in the face and knocks him down, he might stun him; if he puts a sword in his gut he _will_ kill him. There’s little chance of the later—they aren’t fighting to kill; only to disarm—but, regardless, a fist is the safer bet.  
  
Though, Logan might be thinking more along the lines of the fact that, in a brawl, he would most definitely have the advantage. Size is, unfortunately, still a handicap Charles hasn’t quite managed to ever overcome in grappling.  
  
Forty-five seconds.  
  
“You forget how to use sword?” he asks when Logan swings his weapon and then draws momentum around to try to backhand Charles.  
  
“Use what you got, Xavier. You ought to know that.”  
  
He certainly does. “You haven’t got much.”  
  
That earns him a feral, delighted grin—too confident for someone whose time is ticking away.  
  
“You sure?” Logan leans back, making to draw his sword up again—  
  
“Quite sure—“  
  
Holy hell. All of a sudden, where there was one sword before, there are—at least six, no, seven, counting the actual one, and _are the swords coming out of his_ hands _?_ A mutation, obviously, but Logan hadn’t shown this before, and—  
  
He can’t parry seven weapons all at once.  
  
Which is how he finds himself flat on his back, staring up at a grinning Logan, who is cheerfully holding the points of the swords _from his hands_ to Charles’ neck.  
  
“Yield?”  
  
Charles almost does, just from shock. That wouldn’t do, though—not when he took this fight in the first place knowing that, no matter how good Logan was, Charles quite simply could _not_ lose a bet where Logan had two minutes to convince him to yield. Twenty seconds now. Logan won’t be able to readjust his strategy in that amount of time—not to sufficiently combat what Charles is about to hit him with:  
  
“No.”  
  
Logan’s eyebrows shoot straight for his frankly ridiculous hairline. “No?”  
  
“That’s right: _no_. I don’t yield.”  
  
The blades press a little closer—and Charles, simply because he can, smiles sweetly—or he’s been told he looks sweet when he smiles that way—and leans in toward the blades.  
  
“Xavier.” His words are well-defined and slow, like speaking to a small child. “You’ve lost.”  
  
“Maybe. But if I don’t yield, your only option is to kill me. And I _know_ you can’t do _that_.” It’s quite gratifying to see those brows climb even higher. That look of surprise? He put it there. That’s _right_. “Still think strategy is less useful than a sword?” He smiles again and, very deliberately—this couldn’t possibly feel any better—reaches out, places his hand on the dull bit of Logan’s outermost blade, and pushes it away. “Also? _Time_.”  
  
And so it is. Logan’s poleaxed expression says all too clearly that he knows it just as well as Charles does.  
  
“Well then.” Smiling, he gets his arms under him. He’ll have a few bruises, but, oh, this is _worth it_ , “It’s been a pleasure, Logan. Better luck next time. Do be sure to tell this to Erik in _excruciating_ detail if he ever again thinks to send you to bully me into something I don’t want.”  
  
At this juncture, he’d expect anything from swearing to threats, to a silent stomp out of the room. But what he can honestly say he didn’t see coming? Laughter. More specifically, Logan losing it and laughing like a maniac, putting his back into it and bending over, hands—now free of sabers—on his knees.  
  
“You’re good, Xavier, I’ll give you that,” he admits once he’s composed himself to the point where he can breathe again. He straightens back up, looking Charles full in the face. Hm. Points for having the strength for that: most men wouldn’t be so good as to look the man who beat them in the eye like this. “As clever as they say. But you know what? You’re still the biggest fool I’ve ever met.”  
  
Charming. “Excuse me?” He tosses the sword aside, a few feet from Logan. Let him pick it up, if he likes. Charles is not in the habit of doing favors for those who insult him.  
  
“You can think your way out of a fight, but here you are hiding in a pile of blankets in a nursery, when you could be strewing a whole wedding with landmines.”  
  
Something about that rings a little too true. “I’ll thank you to keep out of my business, as that was our deal—“  
  
“Of course you would.” How is it that this man lost their fight, but he still effects a superior air as he stoops to pick up Charles’ sword and slide it into his belt? “If you want to prove you’re really clever, you’d take advantage of the fact that Lehnsherr has left you all by your lonesome to plan a wedding. _He_ might be able to spot your bullshit, but a wedding planner who doesn’t know you sure as hell ain’t gonna be able to.”  
  
This is—it certainly isn’t what he expected Logan to say at this point. “I’m sorry: are you telling me to deliberately select options that will irritate Erik but which will seem perfectly legitimate to anyone else?”  
  
Logan laughs and heads for the door: good as his word, apparently, since he _is_ leaving. “I ain’t telling you anything, kid. This is something you got to figure out for yourself. Just saying what _I’d_ do. ”  
  
Right, of _course_ he’s not making that suggestion: just like he didn’t instigate a swordfight in the middle of a bedroom. How stupid: of _course_ he is telling Charles what to do, and—Charles shifts uncomfortably—he might just be _right_.  
  
Well, if that isn’t the crowning jewel on a very bad day.  
  
“Think one of those planners said something about trying back in an hour,” Logan calls over his shoulder as he leaves the room, swords dangling off his belt. “Plenty of time for you to get washed up first.” The door clicks shut behind him.  
  
Charles is left standing in the middle of the room—though, not for long. Washing up is all well and good, and he actually means to take Logan’s advice in that as well—who would have thought?—but that hour is good for far more important things.  
  
Things such as figuring out just what those landmines ought to be.  
  
\---------------------  
  
Three hours after sitting down with the wedding planners, it’s beginning to look like agreeing to talk at all is one of the worst mistakes Charles has ever made. The planners are more than willing to incorporate his suggestions, but there are very few meaningful details for him to suggest. Everything is exactly that: _details_. The foundations of the wedding are already set, not because Erik has planned them, but because it’s what society expects, and, in Erik’s political position, deviating too far from the pillars of tradition is… problematic.  
  
The majority of the five planners, while level-headed, tip-toe around him with an excessive sort of caution, considering that every word they jot down helps to construct an absolute monstrosity. And then there are those two that are true stereotypes: brainless and flighty, entirely delighted at the prospect of a royal wedding and the money that will be poured into it, the fashion, the decorations—  
  
It’s insanity. And he’s sitting through it.  
  
“Light or dark blue?” one of the women asks, holding up swaths of silk that, as far as he’s been able to follow, are potentially going to be used in the making of Erik’s shirt. Possibly. He hasn’t been listening to their chatter closely enough to know.  
  
Thus far, his entire contribution to the wedding consists in advocating for white wine and strawberries at the reception, both of which Erik dislikes, and an out-and-out refusal to wear robes. He will be wearing _trousers_ , thank you, and, no, he could care less about centuries old tradition and whatever other load of crock they’ve thought up. It’s bad enough that there are other rituals he can’t avoid: being blindfolded, bound—he never made _Moira_ do any of this.  
  
But… Erik is consolidating an entirely new… well, world, essentially, and that is new enough: ritual is necessary for him in a way it never was for Charles. People can only take so much change at once, and, in the midst of upheaval, they need stability. That’s—it’s understandable if not forgivable, though detestable, and the more he hears, the more Charles can’t help but wonder how he can bear the entire lump of humiliation into which this wedding is melting.  
  
He almost— _almost_ , mind—wishes Erik were here. Once, they would have mocked the rituals together. And he could have at least… _thought_ at Erik, in a way he won’t at these people.  
  
He hasn’t thought at _anyone_ since he’s come here.  
  
His telepathy feels numbed, after days of little more than brushing the surfaces of minds, lest Erik notice. It’s very tempting just to stretch out, insert himself into the thoughts of these people before him: most people, as vapid as they may appear—have a depth to them that a non-telepath could never imagine, thoughts and memories, hopes, dreams that have terrified them, twinges of conscience and hesitation, all twined together in a net that holds up the personality of who they are, catching the bits of them that fall out and away. The one time that he was in the mind of someone who had experienced a psychotic break, it didn’t take him long to figure out that it was because that net had torn, leaking pieces of the person out through the tear too quickly: the mind hadn’t been able to hold the person together.  
  
To reach out, to touch—he _could_ do it, but anything he sees now, Erik can see too if he wishes to look, and what would he see, do, even, if there was something incriminating in a mind Charles touched? It would be a terrible thing to hold responsibility for a person’s downfall, simply because he’d discovered something Erik would find detestable—all because Charles couldn’t hold back prying.  
  
And so he doesn’t look, not properly. He stays here, bottom going numb from how long he’s been sitting in what is, admittedly, a fine chair, embroidered cushion and all. But it’s become a bit of a game now: how long can he go before he shifts, setting his lower half alive with pins and needles? If he stays very still, concentrates hard, he almost looses the sense of his lower body, left instead with hyperawareness but a block on his movement. And then, to shift, and feel it come to life again.  
  
The game is a far sight better than subjecting himself to the full force of wedding preparations.  
  
“You will need to be measured, Sir,” one of the tailors tells him. “We have some ideas for your design, if you are truly set on wearing trousers rather than a traditional robe—“  
  
“Unreservedly,” Charles deadpans, running a finger across the edge of the table.  
  
The tailor clears his throat. “Uh, yes, well, then perhaps you will take a look at—“  
  
“Erik hasn’t stipulated?” he asks, looking up from under his eyelashes at the man. He’s a mousy slip of a creature, dressed impeccably, but unable to hide the fact that he is not, nor will he ever be, handsome.  
  
“He… has expressed preferences, Sir,” the man admits. “But he was adamant that you ought to be consulted.”  
  
“Really?” How nice. Like giving a hangman a choice of rope. “I suppose there are certain customs that can’t be avoided.”  
  
“Well, the blindfold, certainly, and the bindings—“  
  
Charming. But… if he has to, he’d do best to pick materials easiest to work his way out of when the time comes. Not to strip for Erik, oh, no, but—he can’t trust Erik to untie him on command. He’ll want to be able to wiggle out of the bindings on his own if he needs to do so. “If those things are really necessary, I want them made out of the same material as my clothes.”  
  
The tailor blinks. Around the table, the four consultants are silent, waiting and watching. “Which would be, Sir?”  
  
He shrugs. What would be easiest to untie? Something that doesn’t catch and hold. He’s no expert on fabrics, but… “Silk?”  
  
Apparently he’s said the right thing all around, because the tailor’s wire thin mouth curves up, smiling, and a few of the others give approving nods. “An excellent choice, Sir. It will need to be in white, of course.”  
  
Seems such a waste, taking up such excellent cloth for such a purpose. “I don’t see why. I have a son. I daresay that the public knows I’m no virgin.”  
  
They don’t even know he’s a bearer. Yet. Nine months from now there will be no hiding it, unless he can find a way to….  
  
Which, of course, begs another question: there are… ways to induce a miscarriage. If he truly can’t stand the thought of having a child yet, he could—but, _could_ he? He loves David—and more children are a happy prospect, were they under other circumstances not involving a power play and an unhappy childhood with a father who is, essentially, a product of coercion and a certain societal notion of what a bearer is. A warmth even curls in his gut at the thought of _Erik’s_ children, but that’s not enough. He and Erik could have been happy in another life, but not with what Erik has done now, and the prospect of bringing a child into that….  
  
There is a great deal to think on.  
  
At the mention of his lack of virginity—heaven forbid he mention what everyone already knows—scandalized tittering erupts over the table in a soft wave. No one is particularly rude, though he knows precisely what they’re saying, put out at the thought that he would dare to mention that he is anything less than pure.  
  
Perhaps he could wear black. Mourning. He wore it after Moira died. Why not now?  
  
The head tailor swallows. “It is—“  
  
“Tradition. Yes, I know.” He sighs and waves the man off. “White it is, then. White silk. I’ll also take that for both the bindings and the blindfold.” What an enlivening prospect… if one enjoys being entirely stripped of his own will.  
  
“And the matter of flowers—“  
  
For the love of—no. He is not choosing flowers. “I don’t care. Let Erik decide.” It will be something awful, probably, knowing Erik’s taste: the man thought magenta was an acceptable color for clothing.  
  
He’s treated to another round of blank stares and discomfort—not difficult to understand, given how little like a blushing bride he’s acting. He’s spent much of his life considering this sort of thing—gender stereotypes and rights of bearers. As King of Westchester, he has a dozen or so tracts on the subject to his name. And here it is now all shoved in his face.  
  
Erik has read those tracts. Charles would know. They talked about it sometimes, on nights when they couldn’t sleep.  
  
“Let Erik decide the rest of it,” he mutters, rising from the table and pushing his chair back. “I don’t care.”  
  
Let them make of that what they will. News from the front says Erik’s offensive is going well, and that it will only be a matter of days before he’s through and into the Upper North. Once he’s taken the city there—there won’t be much more he can do. Most of the settlements are spread out, and so long as Erik leaves them to govern themselves from within, they’ll likely swear allegiance to him. He’ll leave a reagent in the main city, to deal with any problems, but it’s not like Genosha, where Erik had to institute a whole new government: the Upper North settlements govern themselves.  
  
Erik’s timetable wouldn’t matter so very much if not for the fact that it means he’ll be returning on the near end of his estimation: back in time to more thoroughly plan. A week at most, and he’ll be on his way to Genosha, which will fix the wedding for a few days beyond that.  
  
“Sir—“  
  
Not even “My Lord” now, apparently. He’s not the first male bearer to marry a king—not even close—though that only really gives him the added torment of knowing precedent: a consort’s title depends on what their spouse chooses to allow them.  
  
So, on Erik. Again.  
  
Best to just start now, then, yes? “Ask my _fiancé—“_ He spits out the words with more venom than would seem warranted given the situation, and likely more than enough to start a few good rumors, “—when he returns. I have no other input.”  
  
Not true, of course: he has plenty to say, but it’s simply input they won’t incorporate. Things that violate tradition and protocol, innovation, whatever will rile Erik—any of the wedding planners present at that table would close down those ideas as easily as Charles shuts the door to the bedroom behind him, blocking them out and away from him with their grating voices and their insistence on everything he’s never wanted to be.  
  
It’s not nearly as final as he’d like: their principles somehow ooze into the bedroom after him—and, honestly, really, truly, he would like to _destroy_ the monstrosity of a bed that he could swear is staring him down, taunting him with its blue silk comforter and—actually, he doesn’t know what the sheets are, since he hasn’t peeled the covers back to look. But forget stabbing Erik on their wedding night: at this point, his hate for the bed might exceed his anger at Erik. He’ll set the bed on fire instead.  
  
It’ll be just like that run that they made back when they were sneaking into the city after Shaw: the one where Charles rigged the bombs in the sewer under the city walls with just enough power to annihilate the team tracking them, but with not nearly enough force to blow out the street above. Just the same, the explosion had sent flames licking through the grate next to where he and Erik had been sitting, waiting to make sure it worked, and Erik had laughed and laughed at what Charles had considered “a small explosion”—and then had suggested that they roast marshmallows. Later, Charles had promised: after they doubled back around to open the gates for the rest of the army.  
  
With any luck, setting fire to the bed might just count as a fulfillment of that promise: he’ll give Erik another roaring inferno, just as he said he would. Nice of him, indeed.  
  
After the train wreck the wedding will almost certainly be, it might be a mercy.


	10. Chapter 10

It isn’t until early in the afternoon the next day that Charles is once again disturbed. At first he’s fairly certain the knock on the door is Logan seeking entrance, but, that’s a passing conclusion that quickly fades: Logan wouldn’t _bother_ to knock. If he did, it wouldn’t be this tentative, almost mousy noise that skitters across the room and over Charles’ ears.  
  
“What?” he calls out when the person doesn’t simply enter. The servants no longer enter the nursery, but, as per Logan’s commands, put the food on the table in the main room, forcing Charles to emerge long enough to collect it: it can’t be them knocking at the door— though, at the point when they had yet to cease delivering his food directly to the nursery, their knocks _had_ been tentative. Could it be that one of them may have missed Logan’s order?  
  
The door slips open, and—hmm, that’s a bit of a surprise. A doctor? Or, his medical coat and the stethoscope around his neck would indicate that’s what he is. Though, no doctor ought to look this terrified of his patient—and terrified in general, honestly. He’s young, too, with an obvious habit of not meeting a person’s eye, but instead flickering his gaze all around the room and anywhere but at the person he ought to be addressing.  
  
Charles, who has been sitting at the window and staring down toward the courtyard, stands. “Can I help you?”  
  
The man swallows heavily and nods—though it’s hard to tell. The motion could almost pass as an especially violent shiver. “I—um, yes. I’m… Hank McCoy. A doctor—uh, _your_ doctor, and General Howlett—or, actually, the king, I suppose—they, um, they wanted me to make sure you’re healthy.”  
  
Healthy. Is that what they’re calling it these days? Taking a step backwards, he bumps the bend of his knees into the window seat, and, though it wasn’t exactly intended, finds himself once against perched on the cushions. _Healthy._ Gods.  
  
“Thank you, _no_ ,” he snaps, and perhaps he ought to be nicer, when the boy—he’s barely old enough to grow facial hair by the looks of it—is clearly terrified, but considering what he’s here to do, mustering the kind of self-will that would require is beyond the realm of possibility. “I’ll assume that Erik was the one who ordered you to do an inspection, but I’m afraid he’ll simply have to take it on faith that all my bearing parts are in perfect working order, because, honestly— _fuck off_.”  
  
The boy’s eyes blow wide open, and he blinks, face slowly blossoming into knowing and horror all at once. “What—bearer— _what_?”  
  
“For godsakes: if you can’t even address me by my name… “Bearer” is a condition, not a title. Now, get out.”  
  
The boy doesn’t move, but his blinking does speed up, verging on frantic. “I—no, I didn’t know.” He coughs, dragging the sound out of his throat. “I mean, I didn’t know—you’re a bearer?”  
  
Damn it all to hell.  
  
Erik—Logan—neither of them told. This is—is—only some other sort of check-up, and whoever this boy is, he hadn’t known anything about the important things. Only, he does _now_.  
  
“I’m terribly sorry,” Charles breathes out. Looking up at the boy—man, he ought to do him the courtesy of “man,” since he must be if he’s old enough to be the doctor assigned to the king’s—well, the one assigned to Charles, at any rate. But, yes, looking up at the _man_ , he can feel the muscles of his face falling, crumpling under the sudden irrational rage and grief that’s always boiling so close to the surface these days: things have become so twisted that he _assumed_ , and, because he assumed, he’s outed himself. “I thought—“  
  
The man nods—too quickly to be anything resembling comforting, but the franticness of his movements gives the impression that he’s very much trying to reassure Charles. “No, I understand. I mean, I don’t, but I think I do, and—you’re a bearer?”  
  
Charles’ lips twitch, bitter, but under control. “So it would seem. I’d be very appreciative if you’d keep it to yourself.” No use threatening him: surely Erik would dearly love for the secret to slip out like this, revealed by Charles himself. Erik will be no help in stifling rumors that this man might unleash.  
  
Another nod, and he steps closer, fingers darting to tug at the edge of his stethoscope. Poor boy—man, _man_ , damn it—is blatantly nervous, and the fidgeting shows it. Worse, too, when he accidentally gives the stethoscope too hard a tug and sends it whipping around the side of his neck, swinging limply down to smack him in the thigh while he holds the other end and stares at it blankly, as if he can’t believe his medical equipment has served to betray him so inopportunely.  
  
Once he realizes that he’s stood there with a stethoscope in his hand for a few seconds too long to be acceptable, he whips it back around his neck, wincing slightly when it smacks into his chest. At least it reminds him to breathe: he heaves in a deep suck of air, which serves to settle him to some degree, thankfully. It would be an embarrassment to have to revive a doctor.  
  
“No, I won’t tell.” the man assures him, eyes glued to the ground. But he _sounds_ sincere enough. "I mean, I suspected, but nothing has been announced...." And, when he does finally glance up, his eyes are round and earnest: “I’m Hank McCoy.”  
  
It’s force of habit to reach out and take the proffered hand. “Charles Xavier.”  
  
“I know. Everyone knows.” And is it the imagination, or does he sound slightly sorry about that?  
  
Charles forces himself to smile dryly. “Most unfortunate. If you don’t mind me asking—and if I can manage to be a touch politer this time—why are you here, if you weren’t aware I’m a bearer?”  
  
Hank’s eyes flicker toward the crib. “The King hired me for all households needs, and this morning General Howlett asked if I’d have a look at you. He, uh, says you’ve been in a scuffle.”  
  
If that’s what the swordfight is being termed, then, yes, fine. This Hank is a fool if he thinks that’s all this is about, but let him keep his ignorance if he so desires: Logan is disappointingly transparent if he thinks his worry for Charles’ mental health is not clear enough for Charles to take note of it.  
  
“And something about your son. General Howlett has a theory….”  
  
Theory, as in study. No. Study David? Not while Charles has breath in his body. “You aren’t getting near my son.”  
  
It’s probably an ingrained reaction that has Hank taking a step back, hands springing up in front of him and gesticulating wildly. “No, no—I don’t—it isn’t like that. I’d never—not on—not on children—not on _anyone_!”  
  
Then he’d be a piss poor scientist. Most of Westchester’s scientists had a tendency to experiment on _themselves_ at one point or another. Harmless stuff, most of the time, and, despite limited stretches available for Charles to go to the labs—there have been times when he’s wished he hadn’t been born a royal—he’s been able to witness that scientific curiosity enough times to know Hank must be lying. “I don’t believe you.”  
  
“I—“ He needn’t look so stricken at the prospect of doubt. It’s awfully common, these days. “No—you don’t understand—“  
  
“I understand perfectly well, I think.” One step toward the crib. Then another. Anyone who thinks to harm David will have to physically remove Charles first.  
  
“I—I’m a mutant too!” Hank blurts the admission out in a rush, and his face immediately flushes red in the aftermath. The color spreads down his neck too, heating the skin. “Sterile, but… a mutant.”  
  
A sterile mutant? That’s rare. Most mutants are unusually fertile, as it happens. Lucky for Hank, though, that he’s not: a bond only occurs between two people capable of reproducing. Hank will be spared that, even if he’ll have to endure judgment about why he, as a mutant, hasn’t bonded. It’s that cursed idea that, if you _can_ have children, you _should_ be having them—as many as possible, up until it becomes physically inadvisable or age cuts off the necessary physical systems.  
  
In Charles’ case, it hadn’t been so bad. Sure, _many_ people were furious that he’d forgone what people considered his duty as king and a male guardian, but people hadn’t dared question him, and they’d been so relived when Moira happened that, though she was human, they were willing to accept it—overall. There had been resistance, protests, some riots, but he’d done it—and he’d sometimes comforted himself with the knowledge that it wasn’t so bad: if they’d known there was no bond between him and Moira, it would likely have been worse. Of course, at that point he’d thought it was his telepathy that had blocked the bond from forming. Knowing that he was actually bonded to Erik and thus couldn’t bond again—if the public had known _that_ , there would have been mass chaos.  
  
The thing is, though—he _is_ a guardian, in the sense that he can father children. That’s the definition of a guardian, plain and simple. It’s only that being a bearer overrides any other reproductive capabilities. And why not, if all you care for is ensuring the continuance of the species? There are far more people who can sire children than those who can birth them. Bearers, then: prized and captive, practically worshipped, but caged. Too precious to be allowed to risk themselves. Isn’t that the logic?  
  
Bloody stupid logic, it is.  
  
“You’re… a mutant,” he says slowly to Hank, trying the words out on is tongue. Difficult to reconcile the image of the man in front of him with the idea of someone who is privileged by society. Hank hardly acts as though he’s had privilege at all: his mannerisms suggest he’s more encapsulated in the idea that the world is out to beat him down. _Sterile_ mutant, though—he’s probably had his fair share of ill-will.  
  
“Yeah… and a doctor.”  
  
Charles smiles faintly. “Yes, I gathered.” The smile fades quickly. “But that doesn’t change the fact that you’re not getting near by son.”  
  
“I don’t want to hurt him!”  
  
“Oh? He’s perfectly healthy. Why else would you want to examine him?” So that logic is a bit faulty: what of it? Hank may indeed have no intention whatsoever of harming David—but he _may_ , and the prospect is enough to constitute a threat.  
  
“It’s nothing bad! Just… General Howlett—he thinks your son is kind of quiet for a baby. Doesn’t cry much, just sort of….”  
  
“There’s nothing wrong with my son.” Having a quiet baby isn’t a problem—it’s a _delight_. And David _does_ cry: in fact, when he does, it’s often at the worst times, when Charles can’t suppress his own frustration any longer. Poor David probably feels that and fusses. Nothing unusual about that. Any child with a telepathic parent would do the same. That bond between parent and child—of _course_ he’s leaking over into David.  
  
“No, not wrong! Just… there’s the strong possibility that he’s a mutant.”  
  
It would be a miracle if he weren’t. Mutants usually _do_ give birth to mutants. It doesn’t matter. Whatever David’s power is, it’ll become clear later, as he grows. For now, there will be no examination: David is not a lab rat. “If he is, then he is. No reason to pick that apart.” He’s solidly in front of David’s crib now, blocking Hank from view of his son—from David, who has clutched at the edges of the crib and pulled himself up against the side, batting at his father’s back with one chubby hand.  
  
Acquiescing to his son’s demand, Charles turns around long enough to pluck David from the crib and to settle him at his hip, spanning his hand over the tiny shoulder under his grasp. David leans back into his hand, as trusting as ever, and babbling happily.  
  
“Neither of us is sick,” he says after a few moments of silence, in which Hank shifts uncertainly from foot to foot, poking a fingertip into the bridge of his glasses and shoving them back up his nose. “If you’re trying to play Erik’s game, then fine, tell me, and we’ll work something out. I’ll tell you what he wants to hear, but the answer is ‘no’ in regards to Logan’s request.”  
  
“I—okay.”  
  
Shuffling a foot nervously, Hank drops his hands and tucks them down into his lab coat. The flush from before has faded and drained, leaving his skin pale and as washed out as his confidence: everything about him speaks of a general unease. “The king didn’t send me here to look you over, not like you think,” he mumbles, half to the floor. “He—not that he wanted me to look you over at all—uh—“  
  
“If you intend to give me a lecture on how good I have it, or on how I ought to lie back and let Erik get on with things, please show yourself to the door.” That tone could chill the South. It’s enough to make David whine in displeasure, curling his fingers into Charles’ hair. Not tugging, but simply holding on firmly.  
  
Hank glances up. “No. I wouldn’t tell you that.”  
  
“You don’t have any idea—what?” That—this sort of thing shouldn’t be so surprising, but Charles nevertheless finds himself wrong footed, gaping at Hank in what must be a very disconcerting and unattractive fashion. But… Hank _wouldn’t_ tell him that? Surely that was misspoken, misheard—anything but the _truth_.  
  
“I wouldn’t tell you that,” Hanks says again, stronger this time. “Look, I know almost no one agrees with me, and I know I’m probably meant to be cast out of the Church for this, but—I don’t. Think that. I don’t think you should be forced to marry. And kids—there’s lots of evidence that children born to parents in a consensual relationship are happier, healthier—“ The pitch of his voice angles upward, words spilling out faster as he goes, but Charles loses track. He’s heard what he needs to hear.  
  
Hank is right: an opinion like that probably would get him thrown out of the Church. It most definitely would bar him from acting as the royal physician. But, as a non-bearing mutant, he has that right to disagree. Disagreement like that in a bearer is swept under the rug; in a guardian it’s tolerated but ignored, since those guardians who think that nearly always form consensual relationships and reproduce anyway. But for Hank—he’d be left somewhere in between, in no man’s land.  
  
That’s a dangerous position to hold.  
  
And it’s absolutely not something that he could have told Erik. If he had, he’d never have gotten this job.  
  
“What did you tell Erik?” Charles asks, leaning back against the crib and waiting. Don’t get too excited: it could be a ruse. It could be a lie. But if Hank _does_ believe that—he’s a _doctor._ He could help, could be useful in so many ways, and, gods, what a blessing it would be, to hear his own views echoed back at him in confirmation that he isn’t wrong, that others believe this, that thinking he should be able to choose isn’t simply a fluke of his own mind.  
  
Hank gnaws on his lower lip, but he doesn’t back down. The man deserves credit: he may be socially awkward and painfully uncomfortable, but he holds his ground. “Nothing. He never asked. I think he just assumed I thought the way everyone else does. He only asked after my medical qualifications, about my research. He thought—he said you were interested in science too. Asked if maybe, sometime, I could find the time to talk with you about my work.”  
  
Ice squeezes in under Charles’ ribs; he slides his palm off David’s shoulder and replaces it with his entire arm, more securely encompassing him. Only Erik’s manipulation again. A kind sort, this time, trying to find him a friend to interest him, to make his days tolerable, but Erik is touched in the brain if he thinks there could be any trust born between him and Hank if Hank is only offering him his time out of obligation. “Don’t put yourself out,” he replies, clipped and formal.  
  
Hank’s face twists. “No—I—I didn’t mean—I _wanted_ to meet you!” He takes a step forward, hand out, but he jerks it back a second later, as if realizing it might seem invasive. “What you think— _everyone_ knows. More people think you’re right than you probably know, but they’re afraid to admit it! And I… wanted to meet you. I’ve heard the speeches you made in Westchester, when you married your wife. And I admire the work you’ve done for bearers’ rights!” He pauses then, hunching his shoulders in. “Guess that kind of makes sense now, but… I still really admire what you’ve done. I didn’t take this job because of what the king offered. I mean, yeah, he’s paying me really well, but… I wanted to meet you, and… maybe talk?” His voice tips up at the end, same as his chin: both actions are hopeful and almost puppy-like, with the wish not to receive a kick in return.  
  
He could be lying. He could be Erik’s man. But… just a little tendril of thought. Only enough to brush Hank’s thoughts, and small enough that Erik won’t differentiate it from any of the dozens of minds that Charles touches daily. It’s not enough to control Hank or to get anything deeper from him, but it brushes over the dips and peaks of his mind, searching out the spaces for a hint of falsehood.  
  
There’s nothing. He isn’t lying.  
  
He… truly wants to talk, because he thinks likewise.  
  
Gods, he _thinks the same._  
  
“I’m sorry.” Please, let him not have driven Hank away with his short temper, when Hank has been on his side all along. “I believe you.”  
  
Hank shrugs, but there’s a tug of a smile at the corner of his mouth. “I don’t really blame you for not trusting me. Most people in the palace—any situation of power, really—they like it too much to want to break the status quo. You won’t find many allies here.”  
  
“So I’ve discovered.”  
  
David takes that moment to release his grip from his father’s hair, and—oh, clever boy, he turns toward Hank and displays a wide, toothy smile. But: “Dada!” Ah, yes, couldn’t last: and here he is again, whipping around back to his father and blessing him with the same happy expression.  
  
“Yes, My Darling.”  
  
“General Howlett is probably right, you know,” Hank offers after a moment. “Your son is picking up your emotion—and not altogether uniformly, either, I don’t think. It’s not a matter of anything so simple as, ‘You’re happy, he’s happy; you’re sad, he’s sad.’ I think—if you watch him, you’ll find that sometimes he reacts to your stress by shutting down, and other times he matches your mood. That’s why he’s quieter than other babies at times, I think, if I had to theorize, just from what I’ve seen, and what I’ve heard. It’s not conclusive, you understand—”  
  
“No, I would think not.” But the wry smile he offers is friendlier this time: Hank isn’t trying to experiment on David. He’s only curious. Harmlessly curious. “It’s all right: I suppose it can’t hurt to speculate. But there will be no tests. Am I clear?”  
  
“Yeah, yeah, of course!” He nods, a little too vigorously, and his glasses slide down his nose: he pushes them back up and keeps right on with what he’s saying: “I bet it’s something about how his own powers react to yours. If he were an empath only, he might just be getting your feelings and reacting to those, but if he’s a telepath too, he’s probably hearing you wishing—even if it’s just subconsciously—that, in some situations, he keep quiet and not draw attention to himself. If those two things are still developing, occasionally one would come in stronger than the other—this is all guesswork, of course—but it’s like any other power: it’s a little unstable at first. So, he goes between playing off your emotions and seeming eerily quiet. Or, if at this stage in his development his powers fluctuate to the point that occasionally they shut off altogether, he might seem like an entirely normal baby. It’s really amazingly fascinating.”  
  
That’s true: it _is_. “Do you hear that, Love? You’re fascinating.” But David only giggles, smacking his hands down onto Charles’ shoulders. Happy now, then. It’s nice to see: so often lately he’s been quiet—and it’s true. In so many of those moments, he must have been wishing for David to make himself invisible, unnoticed by those around him.  
  
That will be a consideration for later, possibly late at night when he’s lying in the nursery listening to David breathe. In the meantime, Hank is here, and Hank _agrees_. Wasting an opportunity like that would be the height of foolishness. “You can’t tell Erik any of this.”  
  
A lock of Hank’s hair drops into his face when he tips his head, looking at Charles as though he’s lost his mind. Fair point. Hank must already know how disastrous telling Erik would be. “I’m pretty good at hiding.”  
  
“Better than I was, I should hope.” Memories like that always take the wind out of him, and maybe someday he’ll understand how to keep his dignity in the face of them, but, for now, he slips sideways and settles down into a chair, placing David onto the floor and letting his son happily flail his limbs about in an approximation of crawling. Or possibly he’s trying to beat up the floor. It’s difficult to tell for certain.  
  
At Charles’ beckoning, Hank sets himself down into a chair nearby. There’s a few moments of nerves when he plucks at the chair arms, hesitant to rest there—is the furniture really that expensive?—but he eventually makes due with putting his hands on his thighs instead.  
  
“So, then: what _are_ you researching?”  
  
There’s very little that can mask the delight that he experiences at seeing a person’s face light up when talking about his work. And Hank—he is truly passionate. Words bubble up and out of him with a confidence that has been lacking in every other aspect of the conversation. And, even better, his research is _fascinating_. To be able to properly spend time in a lab, analyzing what causes mutation—wonderful. Those labs must be a treat, and surely Erik wouldn’t object to a visit…?  
  
An hour later, when Hank finally finishes, Charles has quite literally moved to the edge of his seat, elbows propped on his knees, gravitating toward the best source of fun that he’s had in months. Reading information in a book is not the same as having it conveyed by a brilliant, enthusiastic researcher. Doctor. Whatever Hank is. Apparently, both. Because he’s clever enough to _be_ both.  
  
“I—sorry for going on so long,” Hank apologizes a bit sheepishly, though the slight grin, lopsided and only showing about half his teeth, is assurance enough that he’s not overly worried about Charles’ ire.  
  
“Fascinating,” Charles breathes out. “You’ll come back again, won’t you? This is all—it’s very important to me, this idea of mutation, and I’d like to help you however I can. I’m sure I can gain you some resources, and if it’s not too much of an imposition—“  
  
“Not at all!” Hank blurts.  
  
The grin splitting his own face must be truly ridiculous. “You haven’t heard what I’m going to say.”  
  
There’s that blush again. Hank’s reasons for his self-consciousness are truly deficient, but that sort of thing is seldom logical, and, by this point in the conversation, it’s waxing endearing. “Oh—I—yes, sorry, I thought you’d want to see the labs.”  
  
“I _do_ ,” he admits, grin stretching his muscles so wide that it hurts. It’s a good hurt. The best kind.  
  
And Hank mirrors the expression. “Oh, good! I could use the help, and—it’d be really nice, that’s all. Not many people are interested.”  
  
“I’m afraid to say that I find the majority of society is interested in the wrong things entirely.”  
  
What a way to kill the conversation: sobriety—a pitiful contrast to the high of science—slips back in and strangles the good mood. Both their smiles drop, and, all of a sudden, they’re left sitting across from each other, nearly back where they started, with the exception of…  
  
Well, this time, at this point, it feels a little like they’re friends. More than a little—born of the kind of quickness that’s necessitated by their situations. Two like minds are so very difficult to find these days.  
  
“I brought something for you,” Hanks says quietly, staring off toward the right of Charles’ face. “You don’t have to take it, and it’s a risk to offer it, but….”  
  
Doesn’t matter what it is—turning Hank in is out of the question. Nothing has felt this easy in so long, and to have someone understand him, seated across from him, believing as he does and interested in _science_ —amazing. And David too, curled up in a mess of blankets off in the corner, snoozing—the whole scene couldn’t be better. Turn Hank in and lose the possibility of more of this? Absolutely not.  
  
“I won’t.”  
  
It’s Hank’s turn for a wry grin. “You don’t even know what I’m offering yet.”  
  
Tossing his own words back at him? Very clever. “Doesn’t matter.”  
  
“Here.” Hank fumbles for something in his pocket, drawing it out with shaky hands and extending it toward Charles.  
  
If there were any doubt that he was going to protect Hank, this banishes it. He knows the object in Hank’s hand for what it is almost immediately. Very few people have seen it, but, as King of Westchester, he’d had access to it. There had been no point in using it, when he wasn’t having sex, but he secretly gave it to enough bearers to know very well what he’s looking at.  
  
A syringe, filled with a serum. Birth control. Only about seventy-five percent effective for male bearers, as compared to ninety-nine percent effectiveness for females, but it’s better than nothing. It’s the best thing short of an intrauterine device, but Erik would surely notice that.  
  
This is the best he’ll get.  
  
“Thank you,” he half chokes, reaching out and plucking the syringe from Hank’s fingers. “You don’t—you can’t possibly know how much this means to me. But it’s—why would you risk this much to help me? You have to know, if it’s discovered that you gave me this….”  
  
Erik would kill him. He’d rip Hank apart. They haven’t discussed that, but the fact that birth control has never come up in conversation is evidence enough. Erik wants children immediately. That much has been made viciously clear: remarks about nine months being sufficient to show the world what he is; Erik’s touches to his stomach; and the easy, simple assumptions that pregnancy was never a question. If Erik were to find out that Hank provided a means to thwart that, surely he’d be furious.  
  
Hank shrugs. “It’s worth it. What he’s doing is wrong.” He stops, biting down on the inside of his cheek, and—his eyes flicker back up with a shot of fear, but he holds to his determination with an admirable degree of grittiness. It’s good proof that bravery isn’t about hiding fear: rather, it’s about pushing through it. “I mean, I don’t want him to find out—don’t—the king is _terrifying_ , but—I couldn’t _not_ ….”  
  
“You’re braver than I think you understand, Hank.” Braver than most anyone else in this world. Quiet and unassuming, fumbling and awkward, but good and courageous and fantastic in a way that closes up Charles’ throat and chokes him as he flips the syringe about in his fingers, watching the light glinting off the plastic. “I’d best inject it now, yes? So you can take the syringe away with you?”  
  
Hank nods. “Yeah.”  
  
It’s the work of a quick few moments to find something to tie off around his arm. After that he flicks at the crook of his elbow until he finds a vein—not too difficult. Thankfully, needles have never bothered him, and he slides this one up into the skin with no more than a tiny flinch, thumbing down on the plunger and watching the serum disappearing into his arm.  
  
This won’t be a complete solution: the serum is only seventy-five percent effective for three months. Nothing new about that, though: it’s never been perfect, but merely a stop-gap, and the sort that’s almost demeaning. The serum was developed for bearers to use after a birth, when an IUD was out of the question, but when the bearer didn’t want another pregnancy directly following the first. More often than not, the serum is the result of guardians indulging what they see as a bearer’s whim: what’s three months, give or take? Better to keep a mate happy, concede those three months, when it’s such a tiny thing: they’ll have another child soon enough.  
  
But, regardless of the temporary nature of the serum, the shot is highly regulated, and, with a twenty-five percent chance of conception, not a guarantee—but it’s the best most bearers can ask for under the circumstances.  
  
It’s without a doubt the best _he_ will get.  
  
Once finished, he tosses the empty syringe back to Hank, careful to cap it first. Hank catches it and tucks it back away in the folds of his coat, fingers twitching—almost shaking—when he draws them back into sight.  
  
A trace of fear, then. And, so, it bears repeating: “Thank you.” He hadn’t thought—he’d never expected to have a chance to prevent— “ _Thank you_.”  
  
Erik may want a child straight away, but he hasn’t thought it through. There’s no accord between them, and bringing a child into the mess of their twisted bond is so inadvisable that it’s basically insanity—and it’s institutionalized. How many other bearers have been made to do the exact same thing? It’s all but an expectation that a bearer will be pregnant within his or her first year of marriage.  
  
If not for Hank… well, thank the gods for Hank.  
  
Hank nods, dropping his hands to the arms of the chair and rhythmically tapping his fingers against the fabric. “Sure.”  
  
Sure. As though it’s a simple thing. It’s not. It never could be. So few people would do this for him. That Hank has chosen to do so—it’s a complete blindside, and—goodness, the kind of access Hank can give him, and, it’s foolish, but the idea of an ally—it’s more important than the access to medical supplies. Knowing that many of Westchester’s officials would help him if they could isn’t the same, not when they’re all in prison. Darwin, Alex, Kitty, Sean—there are plenty that would come to his aid.  
  
But none of them can.  
  
Hank— _Hanks_ is _here_ , and he’s risking so much for it. Anyone would be grateful to him for that.  
  
“You should go,” Charles says eventually, and, because it’s easier than keeping his eye on Hank, he runs a fingertip over the puncture wound. It’s hardly bleeding at all. Of course it’s complete rubbish to say so, but it does feel an awful lot like that’s on account of all the blood rushing in toward his heart, which has begun to thump its way into a panic at the promise of being alone again.  
  
Hank will walk out those doors. They’ll be locked behind him. And, once again, time will lurch and hold itself in stasis, waiting on Erik’s return.  
  
But if Hank stays… Erik wanted him to be a friend—although he wouldn’t if he knew Hank’s mind—and that allows Hank’s visits a permissibility not offered to many others. But they’ve only just met: a long first meeting might not be cause for suspicion, but it would generate interest, and that very rapidly devolves to being watched.  
  
Hank pushes himself up out of the chair, nodding curtly, and craning his head to the side, peering over his shoulder. No one is poised to pop up behind him, but the suspicion is undeniably valid. “I’ll come back soon?”  
  
No need to ask it as a question. There’s no doubt of his welcome. “Please. You—Hank, what you’ve done for me today….”  
  
“Was nothing more than any decent person would have done.”  
  
“I’m afraid it’s not that simple. Decent people can be mislead like any other kind of people. It doesn’t make them bad—but it does make them _wrong_. Many other good people wouldn’t do what you have.”  
  
“Is that what you think of Erik?”  
  
Locking his knees isn’t any kind of intelligent, but it’s essentially involuntary: snapping into position at the first smack of accusation. It would serve him right if he were to pass out: soldiers are told not to lock their knees for a reason.  
  
But, before he can answer, Hank ducks his head and looks away. There have been ten-year-olds with a greater projected self-confidence. For someone so strong, Hank fades down into the shadows with such ease, backing away from an opinion he isn’t willing to fight for. Such a contrast to seconds before. It must be a matter of picking his battles.  
  
“I’m sorry. That—you don’t need to answer that. I shouldn’t have asked.”  
  
“Doesn’t matter. The answer is ‘yes.’”  
  
Hank’s head snaps up. “You think he’s a good man?”  
  
“Fundamentally, yes.” But the words come out hesitant, mangled by his teeth biting into his lip. It’s not that it’s a lie—simply that he must sound insane stating the truth. “The things that motivate him are good.”  
  
“If you—“ Even Hank, then: it was too much to hope that someone could understand him completely—not that Hank is to blame for misunderstanding. “If you say so. But—have you considered—“ Stuttered out, hesitant, but clearly sincere. “A lot of people think that, about the people that hurt them. It’s easier to tell yourself that they love you—that—“  
  
Easier? Not in this case. If Erik were the uncomplicated monster that some days his actions would suggest he is, it would be only a matter of putting a knife up under his ribs. With circumstances as they are, though, if that occurs, he’ll be putting a knife into his own side seconds later.  
  
Guilt is funny that way. Love is funny too, to the point that no one sane would ever laugh at it.  
  
“I’m not defending Erik’s actions. Gods know, if there was a line for those with a desire to smack some sense into him, I’d be heading up the queue.”  
  
“You fought a war to try to stay out of his reach.”  
  
“Erik has a core of goodness, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t wrong. We don’t believe the same things. We don’t _want_ the same things.”  
  
Goodness overshadowed by darkness. Simple as that. Not at all like Shaw, who had enjoyed his depravity: Erik is no sadist, but more a pragmatist, doing what he believes needs to be done, despite deriving no pleasure from the mess of it. Shaw, though—waking up at night to the phantasm of his leering grin floating in the dark, and remembering the agony of a sword to the leg and the terror of seeing life spill out, dark and red, into the dirt….  
  
That isn’t Erik. It isn’t the same. It isn’t _good_ , but it isn’t the same.  
  
“You don’t understand,” he tells Hank, twitching the corner of his mouth upward: a lopsided half-smile is the best that can be hoped for. “I’m glad you don’t. It’s not the kind of understanding I’d wish on anyone.”  
  
Hank stuffs his hands into his pockets. “Are you… going to do as he says?”  
  
There’s attachment—knowing that Erik has his good qualities—and then there’s blind stupidity: “Only so much as I have to. But I think you’re really asking something else.”  
  
“I suppose…”  
  
“You want to know whether, if I had the opportunity, I’d bring him down.”  
  
“Yes.” Good on Hank: the confirmation comes out especially strong. Strong where it counts, this Hank McCoy—and that’s good to know.  
  
“Unreservedly.”  
  
That must have been what Hank was hoping to hear: he doesn’t have the sort of face that can lie easily, and the softening in his cheeks is too fluid to be faked. That’s what genuine relief looks like right there. “That’s… that’s good, Sir. I mean, I think that’s good.”  
  
Which is oddly soothing, actually. If Charles were to allow it, there’s the sense that Hank’s approval could fast become gratifying. “If you wouldn’t mind, Hank, the next time you come back, would you bring me some reading material? I don’t much care on what, so long as it’s your research.” Erik would get him books if asked, but Hank’s research sounds fascinating. “I know I won’t understand it straight away, but it’ll give me questions to ask you next time, hmmm?”  
  
“Of course, Sir!” And with that level of enthusiasm, Hank dispels all concern that it might be a hardship. Quite possibility, Hank is as eager for a scientific conversation partner as Charles himself is.  
  
“My thanks, then.”  
  
Nodding toward the door, he gives Hank a soft smile and takes a few steps back, off in the direction of his son. Hank takes the hint and moves for the door, returning Charles’ smile with no hesitation. It’s rare to find a person that open in today’s world: most are far more guarded with their enthusiasm and good will.  
  
“It was a pleasure to meet you, Hank.”  
  
Hank pauses, halfway out the door, with only his head still visible. “You too, Sir.”  
  
Less a pleasure to see him go, but there’s nothing for it. Hank can only stay so long, lest anyone begin to wonder what reason a doctor would have to spend that length of time in Charles’ rooms. The last thing he needs is for rumors of his ill health to begin circulating. Erik might not object to the time spent—not when he evidently wanted Hank to provide company—but he would probably find rumors of his husband’s medical unsoundness less amusing.  
  
But it’s all right. A few more visits, and it will be much easier for others to believe that he and Hank have simply struck up a friendship. Erik will be back soon as well, and, given that he encouraged Hank to come bearing science, he will surely not object to a possible trip to the labs. It’s the sort of thing Erik would concede: of no real political influence, but diverting, and possibly beneficial. An indulgence, truth be told.  
  
Scooping David up, Charles tucks him in against his shoulder. His son is asleep, but the solidness of his weight is undeniably comforting, and one lap about the room turns into two, two turns into three, and, with no further thought about it, he’s begun to circle.  
  
Three laps becomes four, one hour two, two hours three….  
  
Mindlessly, he circles and circles, rerouting the thought elsewhere: to his rose gardens back home in Westchester, where he crossed the colors to create new types, new smells. He’ll discuss it with Hank next time. A garden here might not be such a bad idea….  
  
It isn’t until Angel rings for dinner that he realizes precisely how long he’s been pacing. No matter. There was nothing else for him to do today.  
  
Oddly, though, when he sits down to his evening meal, there’s a bubble of contentment swelling up inside of him. Nothing is perfect. The meal is served, and the servants surreptitiously watch him eat—not as subtly as they think—no doubt poised to report back to Erik on his health. It’s unpleasant, but, unlike the preceding days when he’d refused to come to take dinner outside the nursery, let alone to come to table in the outer rooms as he’s deigned to do this evening, there’s the hope that this won’t be all he is. Not forever.  
  
Erik will return. There will be the wedding—and it strangles his thoughts with no remorse—and it will be awful, but he’s not the only one who thinks this way. Hank thinks so too. People in Westchester thought the same. Not _everyone_ is lost to Shaw’s lies.  
  
It doesn’t mean much for now. It isn’t a plan. It isn’t change.  
  
But it’s at least a reason to hope that, eventually, it might be.


	11. Chapter 11

Charles had anticipated that Erik would be back in Genosha within a week or two, despite Erik's estimate: as it turns out, it takes him two and a half weeks beyond the point when Hank first came to visit. It’s a long time to wait, hanging in limbo.  
  
Hank comes to see him again three days after the first time. Logan must have been briefed on Erik’s reasons for encouraging it, because he allows it with no fuss, going so far as to leave the two of them undisturbed.  
  
It’s a good thing he does: it hadn’t taken longer than twenty-four hours for the excitement of Hank’s visit to die down enough to allow for actual logical reasoning. And when the logic arrives, it barrels in with all the force of a freight train.  
  
Two in the morning, and Charles had woken, panting for breath, and _realizing…_  
  
The memories had to go. Setting up a block against Erik isn’t enough, not for everything: once the bond is completed, those blocks are no guarantee that Erik won’t rip his way through them. Anything Charles knows, Erik _can_ know too, if he wants to look hard enough.  
  
And so Charles _must not know_.  
  
Not everything needs to go, thankfully. Hank’s point of view, while dangerous, is the sort of thing that can’t be forgotten entirely. Hidden neatly behind shields, yes, where Erik will have to tear bits away to find it, but because interaction with Hank will necessitate knowledge of his views, it can’t be erased altogether. And with so many blocks already in Charles’ mind, Erik will never have the time to shred all of them, nor will he likely have the inclination. Once the bond is fully formed, if he needs to know something, it would be far easier to co-opt Charles’ own powers and go fishing for the exact piece of information that he needs, rather than wade through a mess of hidden information, some of which wouldn’t be useful to him.  
  
Charles’ reaction to Raven’s betrayal, for instance—the way he’d smashed his hands up, breaking a few fingers on the wall when he’d lashed out blindly at the first inanimate object he could find—is locked and hidden for no better reason than to save his pride. The memory is of no use to Erik—but that doesn’t mean it’s fit for him to see. There are many memories like that. Useless, but locked.  
  
In this case, an overabundance of information is his best protection. Erik won’t search his mind for evidence of Hank’s loyalty, because he isn’t looking for that piece of information, and he won’t be likely to run across it, unless he begins tearing down every single shield—and that could take _weeks_.  
  
But the administration of birth control? It’s too risky. Doesn’t matter if Erik isn’t looking—if anything happens to let him find it, it will mean Hank’s death. Undesirable political viewpoints might mean dismissal, but unless Erik has proof that Hank acted upon them, he won’t kill him.  
  
It’s a matter of levels, then: hiding things at various points in his mind. Erasing his memory of a memory is the deepest, most secure option, followed by retaining memory of what he knows while piling it under shield upon shield. Beyond that there are upper levels, things that are easier to penetrate. It took Frost a considerable amount of effort to find her way down to the deeper levels.  
  
And if another telepath had to expend considerable effort? Erik will never work his way through it all, not unless he knows precisely what to look for, and, even then, it would be a struggle.  
  
Hank will be as safe as Charles can make him.  
  
Two minutes into Hank’s second visit, any proof of the serum Hank gave him is gone from Hank’s mind, along with any memory. One minute after that, it’s erased from Charles’ own knowledge as well. Not irrevocably, of course, but, like the memories Frost dragged out—and the memory of that experience still wakes him up in a cold sweat—he won’t know that he has them. Erik won’t gain the information from _him_.  
  
Going back to fearing the near-certainty of pregnancy is a small price to pay for Hank’s life.  
  
Or so it seems before that certainty is gone.  
  
After, in the days leading up to Erik’s arrival, the possibility of what Erik’s presence will mean drives him to pace the nursery, then the bedroom, comforting himself with David’s existence. It will be all right. He can survive this. A little brother or sister for David—it can’t be—won’t be—so terrible.  
  
Not until Erik teaches that child to believe as he himself does.  
  
Charles can’t sleep.  
  
Erik will doubtless coddle him all through the pregnancy.  
  
Rousing himself from his mess of blankets is nothing short of a chore.  
  
What if the child turns out to be a bearer?  
  
When he isn’t lying in his nest of blankets, he paces, or otherwise sits at the window, staring out at nothing.  
  
There are precisely forty-three steps around the perimeter of the bedroom.  
  
Erik has been gone longer than he said he would be—or has he? What had he said? How long has it been?  
  
No one will tell him why exactly Erik has been gone so long—when asked, Logan has developed a nasty habit of grunting, extending his knives, and _polishing_ them with a cloth that he’s begun to keep handy—but Charles has gotten disturbingly good at espionage over the years, and while Erik might have been able to pick up what he’s doing, none of the servants expect that, during the night, he’s managed to remove the door handle to his room, hack out most of the wood that’s hidden under the metal plate to which the handle is attached, and then replace the plate and handle, screwing them back to the door with the help of a butter knife. On both sides of the door, he widens a hole out from under the metal just enough to let sound filter relatively well. But, unless someone were to be very observant or to know what to look for, there’s little chance that they’d realize what he’s done.  
  
What he’s done being, naturally, the creation of a perfect means to listen in on any conversations taking place in the room beyond. While they—and who are “they,” this nebulous “they”?—think he is safely tucked away in the bedroom, out of earshot. It isn’t as good as his telepathy, but Erik will feel it if he uses that for more than the little things, and this—it’s easier to hide, under the shields, woven into the innocuous space where Erik has no reason to look. And so what if he finds it? He’ll replace the door handle. Nothing lost, and Charles will have already gotten an earful—whatever lecture Erik gives him will likely not be anywhere near as useful.  
  
Disappointing, really: people may say what they like about Erik, but he would never be so foolish as to assume that Charles wasn’t listening when he was only one room away. Though, he’s worked with Charles and is well aware of some of his more… peculiar talents.  
  
One would have thought he would have remembered to brief his servants on such matters… unless he _wants_ Charles to have all the latest news, which isn’t beyond the realm of possibility.  
  
It would explain why no one made a fuss when Hank returns twice more in the weeks before Erik arrives: he comes bearing not only the reading material that has been responsible for making Charles’ days tolerable, but also news of Erik’s delay. It wouldn’t be beyond Erik to purposely leave Charles with avenues to gain this kind of information.  
  
Though, he probably wouldn’t want Charles to hear _this_ : the rumors that Erik’s delay is precipitated by unforeseen resistance within Westchester. Apparently, kidnapping their king for the purpose of a marriage is being taken as something of an insult. Nice to know that his people are fond enough of him to want to protect his honor. A bit late for that, unfortunately, but it’s the thought that counts—and maybe a little of the action too, since, by all accounts, they are giving Erik a truly difficult time.  
  
If it were only a Westchesterian rebellion, though, Erik might have been able to solve the problem fairly easily. It is a wonderfully uplifting notion to hear that’s not the case: whispers from beyond the door say that Westchester’s continued defiance has caused many to begin asking the question: why is Erik Lehnsherr so determined to have Charles Xavier as a spouse?  
  
Charles Xavier, a non-bearer.  
  
Two non-bearers marrying—meaning that Lehnsherr is breaking his own laws.  
  
A rather large oversight on Erik’s part, that: believing that people would be content for round about nine months with thinking that Erik flouted his own laws. Oh, once Charles has a baby, things will undeniably br cleared up, but, until then….  
  
The whispers say it’s quite a mess.  
  
For his part, Charles tries not to think about it overmuch: it will lose the stunning quality of its cheer if he uses the memory with more frequency than it can withstand. Better to hold onto it, allow himself snatches when even science can’t hold his attention and he begins to feel particularly trapped.  
  
Most days, that’s more often than he would like to admit.  
  
And today—today is _swamped_ with it.  
  
Today is the day Erik returns to Genosha.  
  
Despite all of his listening at doors, Charles had not been aware of Erik’s imminent arrival. Logan grudgingly admits that none of them had been—explaining why his eavesdropping failed him—and that Erik had informed them by the post on the train that he was a mere sixteen hours behind the letter and would follow shortly.  
  
Such an imminent arrival calls for the largest scramble that Charles has seen since he and Erik received word of Shaw’s own arrival in Genosha and had needed to assemble a taskforce within a half hour. What a mess that had been.  
  
But at least it hadn’t contained so much pomp.  
  
This—Charles has never seen so much finery in his life.  
  
He himself is stuffed into a well-cut shirt that is too tight for his liking. It’s cut artistically, or so Angel tells him: to him, it’s merely a shirt that buttons diagonally over his chest, same as if someone slashed a line from his shoulder down to his opposite hip. The fabric is hooked closed with absurdly tiny metal hooks, and the line across his chest is trimmed with light brown silk, a few shades lighter than the rest of fabric. Whatever it is, it’s a hefty fabric, though soft enough on his skin. The trousers are of the same material, though they’re even darker in color, matching his boots. All in all, the ensemble is not the most ridiculous thing to which he could be subjected.  
  
That will keep for his wedding day.  
  
If only this manner of reception would as well.  
  
No help for it, though: he’s expected to greet Erik at the doors of the palace, where the crowds of thronging people gathered at the steps and lining the roads may see him, the very picture of domestic happiness, welcoming home the gallant warrior. Logan doesn’t bother to tell him not to scowl; Angel informs him it’s on his own head if he does.  
  
Amusing that she believes that will be anything resembling a deterrent.  
  
At the heart of it, the worst of the preparation is bundling David into a dark brown frock, meant to match Charles’ own clothes. His son cannot possibly fathom the necessity of it, and, in truth, neither can Charles, especially not when it sets his son to crying, face scrunching like an especially red raisin. David squirms and squirms, tearing at the clothes with tiny hands and wailing his protest at being forced into something more restricting than the loose tunics and, more often, the blankets to which he’s accustomed. Neither of them understands the purpose, and it tears at Charles’ heart to do this to his son for no good reason.  
  
Ceremony, is his only answer. _Bullshit_ is Logan’s preferred explanation. There’s no real difficulty in determining which is closer to accuracy.  
  
Once the dressing and washing is done—Charles very nearly snarls when someone tries to touch his hair—he and David are escorted out of his rooms and off through the palace. If the occasion were a more agreeable one, he might find the chance to stretch his legs pleasant, considering how much time he’s spent curled up in a nest of blankets next to David’s crib, or in pacing about a confined area. But this… there’s a near army of people behind him, guiding him, hemming him in with the same sort of attitude they’d have toward a show pony. There’s little pleasure to be found in _that._  
  
Acting as reigning King of Westchester has left Charles well acquainted with the feeling of thousands of eyes raking over his body, searching out every detail of his clothing and appearance. None of that could have prepared him for this: being scrutinized when in a position of power is so far removed from what he’s feeling now, watched as if he is nothing better than an object. They won’t see him as a leader; they’ll judge his appeal as a piece of meat, question why Erik wants him, pick apart his shared past with Erik, and judge and judge and judge—and not for his merits.  
  
Before, he has always earned his way by what he has done, by the type of ruler that he was.  
  
But not now.  
  
“Chin up, Kid,” Logan growls out gruffly from beside him as he escorts Charles down the entrance hall of the palace and out onto the front terrace. Logan is, it appears, no more looking forward to this than Charles is, and, strange as it sounds, there’s a bit of comfort to be had in that—in how Logan, though he may keep quiet, radiates at least some degree of distaste over what Charles’ life has become.  
  
If there were any mercy to be had in this world, it would be pouring rain.  
  
Predictably, when Charles steps out of the palace, the sun is almost blinding.  
  
Clutching more tightly at his son, he ventures out into the light—right at midday, looming overhead the palace and burning down into the flagstones of the streets—and does his best to ignore the titter that washes over the crowd. He must have experienced this before, surely, but it’s nothing like now, with every single eye on him for reasons so far beyond his control that he can’t possibly….  
  
To handle this, everyday, all day, from now on. He. Can’t. Possibly.  
  
Under his feet, the flagstones echo back the sound of his boots, worse than a drumbeat before an execution. Each step becomes more difficult, moving him closer to the edge of the terrace, down toward the great tiers of steps that begin at the end of the city’s major road and climb up to the palace. He stops a few feet back from the edge and waits, tucking his hands into the folds of David’s frock and drawing his shoulders straight; his head back and chin up; eyes steady and fixed on the crowd before him.  
  
Though he must look very prim and collected, he could almost laugh at the notion: nervous anxiety curls in him, twining along throughout all his organs, rooted deeply enough that when he tries to pluck it out—good gods, his organs are going to uproot right along with it. And so the anxiety stays, wetting his palms with sweat and pinching his breath, setting every instinct within him to a fever pitch of _runrunrun_.  
  
 _[Hush, Charles. You’re so stiff.]_  
  
Erik. It could only ever be Erik now. Still quarter of a mile away—he can see Erik’s carriage from here, made of fine wood and polished to a high shine, drawn by four black horses—and he’s already able to reach into Charles’ mind. Charles doesn’t waver: only blinks and keeps on staring.  
  
 _[I can’t do this.]_  
  
Admitting weakness was not his intention, but there’s always a breaking point, and he can’t imagine— _cannot_ live like this. If admitting it will help—if Erik will do something to change it, he’ll be weak, if that’s what it takes, just to make this stop.  
  
 _[You’re the strongest man I know]_ Erik’s mind murmurs, underwritten with a hint of concern. _[This spectacle is distasteful, I know, but—]_  
  
 _[They’re not looking at me like they did when I was king. They don’t care about my policies or my decisions. They’re imagining me as an object, as—]_  
  
The mental equivalent of a snarl rips through his mind, and he sucks in a breath, drawing his shoulders up a little higher. _[You are no object. Perhaps they see you as one now, but they will learn—I swear, Charles, they will learn how gifted you are—]_  
  
 _[They should already know what I’m capable of. I’ve ruled in my own right. It’s not about what I haven’t shown—it’s about—gods, how can you not_ see? _Don’t you understand what you’ve done to me?]_  
  
 _[They’ll respect you: you’ll prove to them that you’re just as brilliant now as you were in Westchester.]_  
  
 _[It’s not about what I’ve_ done! _]_  
  
This is ridiculous. The desire to shake his head is strong—is this what he’s become? A spectacle?  
  
And Erik—Erik—he’s so blind. Why is he so blind? If he doesn’t see the bare thoughts of the people before him, he’s not to be faulted—not everyone can read minds—but shouldn’t Erik see it in their eyes? Every casual once-over, where before there would have been thoughts on Charles’ policies, that’s dissolved into how he’d look in bed with nothing on. How does his ass look in those pants? Such pretty eyes….  
  
Show him, Charles’ mind screams. And he does. He throws open his mind to Erik, wraps it around the crowd and _tugs_.  
  
 _PrettylipsWhosebaby?GorgeouseyesGoodinbed?Smallbethe’dlookgoodunderneathLehnsherrSexShirtmakeshisshouldersbroadWhokilledShaw?NotabearerIsheabearer?Whataprettyboy._  
  
No slap could have been worse: Charles visibly snaps back, caught quickly by Logan’s arm on his elbow. This time, he’s actually thankful for it, same as he is for the echoes of Erik in his mind—his anger. Because anger means he sees something wrong.  
  
 _Yes, Erik, do you see it_ now _?_ But he doesn’t send the thought: only cradles it within his own mind and pushes it back down deeper, buried under the exhaustion from the sunlight and waiting.  
  
“What’s wrong?” Logan asks, letting go—wouldn’t do to have people see him touch for too long. Maybe when Charles was king, his security could have done it, but now—now, there’s always the thought of sex and intrigue: as Erik’s spouse, an affair would be a crime.  
  
Well, to hell with it.  
  
Stand here and look pretty? No. There must be something, anything else. But, if there were, he would already have moved. Instead his boots remain glued to the flagstone, and his spine imitates a pole, no matter how close the procession becomes. He won’t change, not when moving might mean breaking.  
  
By the time Erik’s procession reaches the palace and Erik steps from his carriage to ascend the steps, Charles is drenched in sweat from both the sun and his own nerves. David, too, is fussing, ignoring Charles attempts to jostle him into good humor: in fact, the more he tries—tries _anything—_ the more agitated David becomes.  
  
But, for better or for worse, this is almost over. With Erik here, the situation will change, concluding this stage of the events, and putting them one step closer to the end. The next step might not be any better, but it _is_ further along.  
  
There’s also the matter of Erik’s appearance: he does cut a fine figure in his military garb. Charles hadn’t seen the new design before today. Obviously Genosha’s military uniforms would have to be redesigned—no one would want to wear the uniform associated with Shaw’s army—but Charles hadn’t thought on it, truthfully. He’s had far more pressing matters.  
  
Erik models the new change well, though: a black suit, cut sharply, and with silver buttons lining down the front of it. Similarly, the side seams of the pants and the arms are also trailed in lines of silver. The belt too is colored the same, though the hat is the same black as the suit, silver only in the emblem on its front: a small flame, Charles notes dully. _[Forged by fire]_ Erik sends him mentally when he sees him looking.  
  
Seems they haven’t entirely disconnected their minds after that attempt to show Erik the depths of people’s thoughts. Doing so now seems almost more effort than it’s worth; Charles doesn’t bother.  
  
And then, another, smugger, thought: _[I’m glad to hear you think I look handsome. You do as well, Liebling.]_  
  
 _[Handsome, Erik, was never the problem.]_ Thinking Erik handsome was part of what possessed him to kiss Erik in the first place, which sparked the imprint, and—  
  
Why bother examining it again? He has the rest of his life to torture himself over it: might as well confine himself to whatever fresh hell this particular moment wants to offer.  
  
Right. That… may not be a thought he wants Erik to overhear: Charles disconnects their minds with more enthusiasm than is probably necessary—though Erik doesn’t acknowledge it.  
  
Instead of appearing at all disconcerted, he ascends the final top step with a decided spring to his gait. Though his movements are clipped and military, they’re vivacious and infused with the sense that life is only just held back beneath his solid control. Cracks of that vigor show in his face, though, in the quirk of his lips, crinkled upward with anticipation and good humor. With the sun this bright, his eyes glisten more blue-green than usual, this time with flecks of gray, though that may just be the work of the silver on his uniform, drawing the coloring out and even serving to darken his hair under the sky’s reflection. Erik is and always will be tightly held, wrapped up in coiled muscles and rigorous self-control, but he has a way about him that avoids being stilted and has, as far as Charles is concerned, always demanded a deeper examination: the absolute certainty that there is so much more to Erik than meets the eye. He is positively fascinating.  
  
In that, Erik has never disappointed him.  
  
“Gods, I’ve missed you, Charles,” he whispers, and Charles has the space of half a second to realize that Erik never slowed down in his approach before he’s gathered up in a tight embrace, David pressed between the two of them, and simply held close to Erik’s chest.  
  
Against his right arm, he can feel Erik’s heart beat: a steady thump, and, despite everything, the stability of it soothes him, and he relaxes, lowering his head to Erik’s shoulder and shaking out the misery of the last few minutes with such abandon that he’s frankly surprised his bones don’t separate.  
  
Weakness? Almost certainly. But Erik was his friend once, and he is the only thing predictable in this sea of swirling, seeking minds, all narrowed in on Charles himself.   
  
There will be plenty of time later to hate himself for this.  
  
“You have made me miserable,” he whispers out against Erik’s neck, offering up one more shudder.  
  
Hadn’t he told Erik before he left that the course he was on—such indiscriminate conquering—wrenched at something in him? He had, and Erik went anyway, and so surely telling him now that things felt precisely like Charles had thought they would is not an unreasonable course of action.  
  
“But I’ll make you very happy _now_ ,” Erik whispers in response, rocking him a little. “I promise.”  
  
Promises, promises. Haven’t they had rather enough of those? They’re so horrid when they’re broken.  
  
All of this is rather enough, come to think of it. So much of the warmth of Erik’s skin against his own, when he is already so overheated—Charles pulls back, lets Erik keep his hands to his elbows, which Erik acknowledges with a small tug of his mouth’s right side. “Inside, then?” Charles asks slowly, biting his lip. They’ve grown chapped in the sun; he can’t remember when he last had a drink.  
  
Erik doesn’t look away. “I certainly hope so. I’ve had my fill of the crowd. I’d like nothing more than a quiet room.”  
  
Leaving is never so easily done, unfortunately, though Erik makes a nice show of it, turning and waving to the crowd, his free hand slipping down to Charles’ waist. The gesture is damningly proprietary, but Charles doesn’t move; simply watches as the crowd cheers at Erik’s acknowledgement, same as they did a few years ago when Erik came before them to announce Shaw’s defeat and to essentially tell them with very pretty, very correct language, that they were the first to fall among the regions.  
  
And here they are a few years later, with Erik the conquering hero, cheered as a savior yet again.  
  
If not for the audience, Charles could sob.  
  
“How is David?” Erik asks when he turns back, dropping his hand and nodding quickly toward Logan. Logan nods in return, beckoning for Charles and Erik to precede him, which they do, leaving Charles to fight the urge to look back over his shoulder, just to confirm that Logan is there. He’s grown strangely accustomed to his presence in recent days, even to the point where he doesn’t snap if Logan comes too close to David. It’s a privilege afforded to very few.  
  
But… how is David, Erik asks? Better now than he was before Erik arrived. As riled as he was before, he’s quieted, probably from being pressed into the safety between their bodies. Charles can relate: to hide away from the rest of the world—wasn’t he just doing it, burying his face in Erik’s neck, consequences be damned?  
  
“Tired of the sun.”  
  
Erik chuckles. “Smart boy.”  
  
Whether he means Charles—a credit to his careful evasion of the actual question—or David is anyone’s guess.  
  
“I’ll call for something cold to drink from the kitchens.”  
  
“Thank you, I’m perfectly capable of doing it myself.”  
  
Erik frowns at the rebuff, but he doesn’t press, content instead to keep one hand to Charles’ waist as they enter the palace. The shadows from the sun streak the entrance hall, but it’s thankfully cooler here, and when the doors are closed all the marble will lower the temperature further. Their quarters will be positively luxurious, closed away and also made of marble as they are. Hideously cold in the winter, though, but surely stocked with a myriad of blankets to make up for it. Will it make any difference at all that he’ll have a spouse eager to wait on him, to bring him warm drinks and to curl around him to keep him warm?   
  
Come winter, he’ll have no choice but to find out. But even waiting that long to experience domestic life with Erik is not a luxury he’s to be afford: once they’re entirely in the palace, Erik waves off Logan with a pointed look—they’ve worked together before, then, extensively enough to know each other’s expressions—and takes it upon himself to escort Charles back to their quarters.  
  
For someone so dependent upon custom, Erik is proving himself surprisingly willing to break it when it comes to putting Charles in his presence prior to the wedding. Of course, Charles’ words to the wedding planner weren’t just for show: David’s existence ought to have made it more than clear that he’s no virgin.  
  
Only… he _is_ , in the way Erik plans on—  
  
A thought for another day: he straightens his spine and runs a hand over his son’s hair, allowing himself to be led back to the set or rooms. The prospect is deadening, but… As a child, his mother had so often told him he couldn’t always get what he wanted—usually in the context of her not wanting to be bothered with his request—but he hadn’t believed that always meant never, as, lately, it seems to mean.  
  
A guard greets them at the doors to the room, unlocking and pulling them open. Erik ushers Charles into the room first, exchanging a few menial words with the guard before he too follows, footsteps a bit slower than Charles’ own. Either he’s letting Charles establish his own space first or he’s simply curious to see what Charles does. Both, probably.  
  
“Somewhat overdone, I know,” Erik says, glancing about the room once the door is closed behind him. His hands linger over it for a moment, tracing the metal, looking for something that no one else can see. “But Shaw never did things halfway, and I haven’t been around to oversee renovation.”  
  
“And here I thought you approved of his tastes,” Charles snips, offering Erik his back and heading for the bedroom. Of all the places he _doesn’t_ want to go—but David needs to go down for a nap, after all the chaos of the morning, and any conversation he and Erik are about to have—it isn’t one to which a child ought to be privy.  
  
Sex, probably. And he’ll be damned if his son needs to know what his daddy is being made to do.  
  
Erik follows him doggedly, though he does keep a few paces behind—not an accident, obviously, though it never hurts to be certain: Charles slows down, listening as Erik footsteps do likewise, and then speeds up, finding himself once again imitated. How nice of Erik, to try to give him at least the illusion of some space. It isn’t real—not when Erik can cross the room in a handful of seconds, but the buffer does let Charles breathe and think, and, best of all, put David down for his nap without Erik hanging over him.  
  
Unfortunately, David has other ideas: the madness of the morning has, understandably, left him feeling fussy, and he’s more than willing to express that to Charles through a series of loud squalls that wreak havoc on the eardrums of all those close to him. His son is a lovely, lovely child, but he has a particularly jarring cry, worse than most babies—rather akin to a dying animal. Charles bounces him, paces with him, tries to talk to him, and all of it works until he attempts to set him down in the crib, at which point David screeches out his displeasure once again and flails his tiny fists. He hadn’t been like that before Erik came back, and—David _has_ to be operating with some sort of mental gifting at the moment. Of all the things he could get from Charles—couldn’t it have been something easier to bear? But this—he’s young yet, and if Charles’ mother had ever bothered to talk to him, perhaps he would have known if his own telepathy had behaved like this, dipping into the emotions of others before he really understood thought—  
  
“David, _please_ ,” he murmurs. “Daddy’s all right. I’m _all right_. I don’t—“ He sinks his teeth into his lower lip, chewing on words that simply won’t come. “Please, Darling—“  
  
“Is he feeling your emotions?” Erik asks quietly from behind him.  
  
Yes. Maybe. If, as Hank theorizes, his powers are flickering on and off, it’s possible that ten minutes from now he’ll be leeching thoughts rather than emotions, or perhaps nothing at all. It’s so difficult to tell.  
  
For now, Charles doesn’t bother to turn to face Erik. Offering his back to someone he doesn’t trust is hardly tactically sound, but Erik—there are few people he would trust more to physically watch his back than Erik. An odd dichotomy, that, but what Erik wants—the crux of it is all touch and pleasure and bits of control and devotion and, and, and—  
  
Erik isn’t going to touch him while he has a baby in his arms.  
  
And David—somehow, David must know that, if only intuitively, if only by Charles’ thoughts—though he can’t possibly decipher what he’s seeing. Which really just means that he’s boiled the thought down to keeping his Daddy safe, worried that if Charles puts him down—because, damn it all, _Charles_ knows what will happen if he puts David down—his father won’t feel right again. Emotions—thoughts?—are powerful things. Love, like this, that has him staring into his son’s face, pinched with crying, and thinking that it’s strong and brave and all the things a baby shouldn’t have to know yet.  
  
“I—I can’t stop it,” Charles manages to croak out. “If I block out the emotions until he feels nothing, he’ll cry anyway because I’m gone. I can’t—“  
  
The sound of shoes on the floor—Erik moving closer. “Can you make him sleep?”  
  
His own face contorts before he’s able to regain control of it, though he catches it quickly, breaking the expression down and pulling it back up into blankness. “Of course I can, but I can’t just put him to sleep every time he senses that I’m upset—“  
  
 _Because I’d be putting him to sleep all the time._  
  
“And if you think of something happy? Let him play with that memory until he drifts off?”  
  
The mind doesn’t completely shut down during sleep, and David will still feel his father’s emotions, but he doesn’t seem to pick them up so much unless there’s a spike—something like Erik’s return. Charles has been miserable for days and David hasn’t seemed to latch onto _that_ too badly. Showing him a memory could work, then, and by the time he wakes, things might have smoothed over.  
  
Worth a try.  
  
“I—yes—I can try.“  
  
“Anything I can help with?”  
  
“No. Just… don’t say anything. I need quiet.”  
  
Not as such, but the memory he’s dipping into his memory for is one that Erik’s voice will sour.  
  
The memory comes to him easily, twirling around the branch of consciousness that he pokes into his own recollections. A gentle mental touch is sufficient for this—it isn’t so complicated as to require much finesse—and he’s able to push the memory at David, floating the cloud of thought and feeling toward his son on the breeze of _thoughtthinkfeelfeelfeel_ that never quite stops pulsing in his brain.  
  
David’s mind reaches out and grasps the thought eagerly, pulling it into the babyish tendrils of his mind and poking at it until the memory unfurls, curling out into his thoughts. It’s mostly emotion, and Charles slumps in relaxation as the _lovecomfortsafe_ seeps back through their connection into his own mind.  
  
 _Moira, rocking David just after he was born. Her brown hair, sweaty from exertion, falling down over her cheek and catching in a tear track, as she’d swayed her own body back and forth, curling over her child and staring down at him with bright, exhausted eyes, like he was the most astonishing thing in the world._  
  
The memory plays on a loop, though Charles doesn’t bother drawing the ends together, content to simply conflate the entire experience into one collage of what he’d felt that day, along with Moira’s emotions, as Charles had felt them. He lets David paw at it for a little while, before he carefully pulls his son’s mind back from it, wrapping him in the emotion from the memory, but with a distance: easy enough that, this time, when he sets David down, the baby doesn’t scream.  
  
Within minutes, he’s asleep.  
  
“What did you show him?” Erik asks once Charles has drawn back from the crib, retracing his earlier footsteps with a lighter tread than before. He half anticipates that David’s eyes will pop open and his screaming will start back up, but, thankfully, he stays quiet.  
  
“Don’t you know?” he asks, almost wistfully, finally turning to face Erik.  
  
Undeniably, finding Erik watching him with a half-distanced look, mostly perplexed, is somewhat startling. He’d expected impatience, irritation at the time David took: Erik has admirable patience in some respects, mainly in hunting down his marks, both romantic and otherwise, but that doesn’t always extend to other aspects of his life. A baby—Charles wouldn’t have thought that he’d take kindly to being denied his goals for any longer than necessary simply on account of an infant’s comfort.  
  
But… the lines of his face have softened, and he’s shifted his weight lazily onto one hip, arms crossed while he watches Charles and David, nearly languid in his posture. Even his shoulders bow the slightest amount, until he appears utterly unthreatened, certainly not frustrated—almost content.  
  
“You pulled your shields up toward the end of the procession to the palace, remember?” he says, tapping a finger lightly against his own elbow. Still, he doesn’t appear impatient, but merely amused, gracing Charles with a quirked smile. “So: what was the memory?”  
  
Lie, obviously. If Erik doesn’t know, he has no desire to tell him: “Nothing exciting. Just a time when I rocked him to sleep in front of a fireplace at Westchester. It was warm inside, snowing outside, and there were blankets—” He blinks back an uncomfortable twitch of his lips. “I was content,” he says instead. “Just a simple thing—an easy enough memory to recall.”  
  
“A _beautiful_ thing.”  
  
The memory is real—if Erik looks, that’s what he’ll see, and it will appear authentic because it _is_ authentic. And, as Erik says… beautiful.  
  
Right and wrong, though—it’s never so simple, nor is _Erik_ … and Erik may not have been speaking solely of the memory. His eyes have warmed, slow burning and full of affection, reaching out toward Charles along with his hands. Whereas his fingers cup Charles’ elbows, his mind slots in nicely to Charles own thoughts, rubbing against those thoughts like a cat against someone’s leg, aching, almost purring. [ _Beautiful]_ his mind echoes, [ _Beautifulbeautifulbeautiful]._  
  
 _[Charles]_ it says.  
  
“I brought your things from Westchester.”  
  
Ah, back to logistics, then. And such a nice break it had been. This will surely not be so pleasant. “Did you?” He hums, non-committal, as bland as his statement, but he does allow Erik to pull him along when the other man begins stepping backwards, steering toward the door.  
  
“If I missed anything, tell me where it is and I’ll have someone retrieve it.”  
  
Charming, the thought of others rifling through his belongings. “Are you hoping for a thank-you?”  
  
Erik’s brow bends upward. “I know better than to hope for that.” His fingers flex, and his smile evens out, a little guarded, though still affectionate. “I’m told you’ve been sleeping on the floor of the nursery. The nest of blankets would seem to indicate that wasn’t quite as tall a tale as I’d hoped.”  
  
“A pity. The tales I manage to inspire usually are the only tall thing about me.”  
  
The joke would be better if he didn’t know that Erik enjoys the fact that Charles is the shorter of the two of them. He’s seen it in Erik’s mind, even before the bond. And why not? He’d known Erik was attracted to him—just hadn’t thought he’d act on it. Thoughts on his height and how he’d fit nicely into Erik’s arms had never bothered him overmuch, and perhaps not at all—not when he’d liked the idea of it a little too much himself.  
  
Erik huffs out a laugh as they go through the door, back into the bedroom. He drops his hands then and reaches out to close the door behind him, manually, which may be out of habit, though magnanimity might suggest Charles credits Erik with giving him a moment to collect himself.  
  
Habit it is, then.  
  
“Height is no measure of a man, Charles, as you well know. And… I like your height.”  
  
There it is, then: surprising that he actually admits it—or, perhaps not. It might have been surprising once, but not now. There’s no point anymore in being coy about it—in _not_ thinking on how he enjoys tucking Charles against his chest, just under his chin, where he fits so nicely. Warm and close and wrapped up in Erik—  
  
After all those nights in the field, burning with that same want—damn Erik for being something _to_ want—and here he is now, with Erik in front of him….  
  
“You aren’t looking well,” Erik says suddenly, and apparently the reprieve is over, because he steps back into Charles’ space and takes his wrists, drawing him forward toward the—  
  
No. Not the bed. He won’t—he won’t go near the bed.  
  
It’s a matter of locking his knees and shifting his weight back to his heels. It stalls him well enough, and the resistance draws Erik to a stop too, leaving him to frown for the space of a few seconds before he sighs, flicking his gaze toward the bed and back to Charles. His mouth pinches in, and though it smoothes back out quickly, the lines don’t ease as readily.  
  
“Have you ever slept with a man, Charles?” he asks quietly.  
  
“No.” Short, quick, to the point—no reason to hide it when Erik will find out anyway in a few nights.  
  
The fingers on his wrists go very still. “I would have thought—“  
  
“That I’d let someone know what I am?” He laughs bitterly. “No.”  
  
“Surely there must have been someone you trusted enough—“  
  
“ _No_.” He might have been better off if he had. It would have prevented this: being entirely dependent on Erik’s knowledge in this area.  
  
And it would have taken away from Erik what is obviously a delight to him.  
  
Close as they are, he can hear Erik’s breathing speed up, and, if he listens very hard, he fancies he can hear Erik’s heartbeat. Though, that may just be the echo of his joy in Charles’ head—and he _is_ thinking very loudly, sparking with _mineminemine_ and any number of flattering things directed in Charles’ general direction.  
  
Well. He hadn’t—he wouldn’t describe himself quite like _that_. Erik’s view of him is really quite optimistic, and—  
  
“You can’t actually think those things,” he says, surprising even himself when, of his own volition, he lets his shields down a small amount. Erik could push all the way through, but he seems to be allowing Charles some privacy for the time being. Similar to coaxing out a wild animal—kill it with kindness? An interesting thought, though not fully pleasant. And Erik has proven that killing Charles is the furthest thing from his mind. Killing everyone who stands between them—that’s something different. Shades of murder or whatnot.  
  
“What?” A bemused smile curves Erik’s lips. “That I’m the luckiest man alive? That you, Darling, are _stunning_ —“  
  
“I tried to stab you a few weeks ago,” he deadpans, because, just— _really?_  
  
“Did you? You were awfully quick to decide I could feel the metal and that it wasn’t worth trying. As I recall, you did your best to stab _yourself_ instead.”  
  
“Don’t assign me better motives than I really have, Erik.” He looks away, offering just a hint of the curve of his neck. Flash a bit of skin. Distraction is always fair play when the topic is one he would very much like to avoid. Killing Erik—it was hard enough to consider the first time, and rehashing it is… disagreeable.  
  
All his efforts earn him is a low chuckle. Ah, right: his shields are still partially down. “I’m assigning you precisely what you deserve: you love me, though I gather you hate yourself for it a great deal more than you should.” Raising his hand, he cups Charles’ cheek, rubbing his thumb over his hairline, though the other stays firmly on his elbow—with good cause. Bolting seems a more appealing option by the moment.  
  
“That’s very forward of you.”  
  
Erik raises an eyebrow. “Am I wrong?”  
  
“Not entirely.”  
  
“Only partly?”  
  
“That’s what I said.”  
  
“It wasn’t, actually.” But Erik is smiling, rubbing his thumb over the crook of Charles’ elbow, tracing the line of the bone; his other hand has moved half up into Charles’ hair, making itself at home there, scratching over the scalp and leaching the tension out of Charles whether he wants it gone or not. _My mate_ his mind says. _Bonded._ His own body wants this as much as Erik does. _Traitor_ he thinks at it, running his awareness up through his whole frame, starting at his toes and ending at the point where Erik’s hand is touching his hair. “We ought to talk about the wedding.”  
  
No, thank you: he shuts his eyes, and, terribly bad idea, yes, but he leans into Erik’s touch, sighing and sinking into the scritch-scratch of fingers over his scalp. This is what it feels like to be dreadfully tired, isn’t it? No sleep during the Battle of Westchester—or so he’s been hearing it called—and the floor of the nursery and his own inner demons have been keeping him awake.  
  
Blankets are not a mattress, and he’d been cold there on the floor, though he’d had David’s breath to listen to, which is the greatest comfort he could possibly devise. Unfortunately, that doesn’t nullify the results: there’s a persistent ache in his lower back that twinges occasionally, and, as Erik says, he really is rather tired—apparently visibly so. Enough that he can’t be bothered to pull back away from Erik, and the longer they stay there, the more he leans into Erik, letting the other man take his weight while he drifts on the edges of their combined thoughts.  
  
It’s… nice.  
  
Feeling the world tilt under him isn’t enough to startle him out of his reverie. He half expected it anyway, given Erik’s actually admirable instinct to protect. He was like this even before the bond took root, bullying Charles into eating and sleeping, and once or twice doing exactly this and picking him up to be carried off.  
  
That ought to have been a clue, really, to both of them: to Erik, that no non-bearing male would have allowed himself to be coddled in such a fashion; and to himself, that he should have run from Erik as fast as he could, before it was too late and the worst—  
  
The worst happened.  
  
“I’m going to call for a plate of food,” Erik tells him, brushing a kiss to his brow. “Really, Charles, you’re just like you were in the war. Forgetting to eat, sleep—” But he doesn’t sound angry… only worried, or as much as he can sound with the words mumbled out directly into Charles’ hair. “How do you think you’ll help others if you’re this dead on your feet?”  
  
“I thought that part of my life was over,” he snaps. Helping others, that is. Westchester isn’t his any longer, and all of Erik’s pretty words about listening don’t mean that Erik will actually take any of his suggestions and put them into practice.  
  
That’s all _over._  
  
Oh—yes, _oh_ , like he didn’t remember just what this is, how foolish he’s being, relaxing into the warmth of arms and a kind touch. It doesn’t take more than that to make Erik’s touch disagreeable indeed, and—Charles’ chest clenches painfully, seizing up as his mind begins to run in a circle, parts of it splintering off from itself and whipping at him in the worst kind of self-flagellation.  
  
 _No self-control._  
  
 _Weak._  
  
 _Pathetic._  
  
 _You were never meant to rule, and maybe you shouldn’t have._  
  
 _Failure._  
  
“Put me down,” he snaps, already twisting. A failure indeed, to be this weak, to let himself want what Erik is giving him.  
  
“No. You need this.”  
  
What he needs? What he needs is his wife back, his kingdom back. It hadn’t been perfect, of course: he’d missed Erik, missed what they had, and that was always going to leave a gap, but he’d been in love with Moira too, and then there had been David. Before Erik had started invading, and before war loomed again on the horizon and those letters had started coming, he’d been mostly peaceful, just for a little while. Walks in the garden with his wife; and romps in bed; conversations late into the night; strolls through the lower town and watching Moira in a queen’s garb, playing with the children in the streets.  
  
All of those children are displaced now, some probably dead, all because Erik wanted _him._  
  
Damned bastard.  
  
He lashes out again, catching Erik’s shoulder with his elbow. Not hard enough, though. It’s _never_ hard enough.  
  
Eventually, Erik does put him down—but it’s worse when he does, though it takes him a moment of sinking down into warmth and comfort and softness to realize just where he’s been deposited. The silky fabric is all around him, and when he turns his palms down, it kisses at them, whispering along his flesh.  
  
The bed.  
  
No.  
  
“Absolutely not,” he hisses, already rolling. Erik lunges after him, but Charles is quick enough to flip off the side of the bed, catching himself on his hands and knees and springing to his feet, tumbling backwards until he hits the wall, where he flattens himself against it. “I won’t touch that bed,” he spits out.  
  
But Erik doesn’t come after him. He’s left leaning over the bed, hands braced on it, watching Charles with an inexplicable sadness that adds weight to his eyes and dampens his emotions down into something unreadable. “How about a chess game?” he asks after a moment. “You can eat while—“  
  
“No, and _no_.”  
  
“You won’t play chess with me?”  
  
“I’d say we already are.”  
  
Begrudgingly, Erik mutters out a stunted laugh. “I find that there’s less collateral damage when we confine our fights to a board.”  
  
“I’d drink to that.” And what he wouldn’t give for a good, stiff bottle of scotch at the moment. Though, the stone of the wall at his back is doing nicely to cool him down in the interim. Nothing like physical proof of his confinement to douse lust.  
  
“Funny you should say so. I brought you something.”  
  
They’ve resorted to bribery, then? How… civil of them.  
  
“Not bribery,” Erik tells him. He pauses, sending a tendril of thought through Charles’ half-lowered shield. Charles had been putting it off—but now he draws them fully up, blocking Erik entirely out. It’s about as unpleasant as he’d thought. The bond—this is part of why he hadn’t wanted it, letting Erik in his head like this so easily, and feeling that he needs him there. “Just a gift. Not a bribe.”  
  
“Not much of a distinction, given my circumstances.”  
  
Erik doesn’t comment on that, but only goes to one of the bags sitting on the floor by the bed. There are others scattered about, and while they hadn’t been worth paying much mind to before now—he’d only assumed they were he and Erik’s things, waiting to be put away—a niggle of curiosity wiggles up through him now, especially when Erik digs into the bag and pulls out a bottle of scotch, wrapped in a bright red ribbon.  
  
It’s lovely, actually. The amber of the liquid, the way the glass catches the light, and the bow even looks to be made of real satin.  
  
“Thoughtful of you,” Charles murmurs, but, despite himself, he does reach out and take the bottle when Erik comes close enough to let him. It’s cool to the touch, and he curls his fingers around it, drawing it in against his chest. Too much practice holding a baby, apparently, but scotch is precious too, and it’s not the worst thing he could be cradling against his chest.  
  
Erik would be _far_ worse.  
  
“I need to discuss some things about the wedding with you.”  
  
Charles glances down at the bottle. “Aren’t you meant to ask me that _after_ I’ve drunk this?”  
  
Erik laughs. “No. I need you sober.”  
  
“It’s not a conversation I want to have while sober.”  
  
Erik sighs, and, though he’s at least an arm’s breadth away, the frustration rolling off him is almost tangible. Gods only know why. If this is a topic he doesn’t want to discuss, all he needs to do is call off the wedding. Make both their lives easier.  
  
Obviously, he has no such intention: his lips are too drawn, too determined, and his right foot is half-lifted already, poised to approach Charles, and if he weren’t held back by ligament and sinew, he’d probably already be inside Charles’ mind. “The wedding planners tell me that you at least deigned to speak with them.”  
  
Speak? Yes, that’s one word for it. He chuckles, letting it rumble up out of his throat, unclogging emotion as it goes. “Yes. You should ask Logan about that.”  
  
Erik pauses, tilting his head. “Logan?”  
  
“Oh, yes. It involved a sword fight.”  
  
“Damn it, Charles—“  
  
Watching him pinch his nose in frustration is gratifying. Very much so. Enough to concentrate on the strength in Erik’s fingers and how well-formed they are, going through a motion of such stress, exactly as Erik always did when he was bent over maps in the candle-light, working and working to find the very best angle of attack, before he’d finally give in and push the maps toward Charles.  
  
In a lot of little ways, seeing Erik make that gesture feels a bit like watching him concede something.  
  
Charles swallows down the lump of emotion lodging in his throat. Didn’t he just do that? Well, again then: he has a lot of emotion to swallow, and surely no one will begrudge him that.  
  
“All right,” Erik says finally, dropping his hand, letting it hover uncertainly—and then raising it to push through his hair, once, twice, and never settling the locks into any better system of order. He looks good like that, though—locks of hair falling down over his forehead. “You’re going to be difficult about this every step of the way. I—it’s not entirely unjustified—“  
  
“Oh? Not _entirely_?” He crosses his arms.  
  
“I’ve put you in a difficult position.”  
  
“You’ve put me in an _impossible_ position.”  
  
“But I could use your help. Not just with the wedding. With… everything.”  
  
Everything? Such as falling on his own sword? Only in Charles’ daydreams, perhaps, and only if he doesn’t imagine the sheer grief that would follow. Some of that is what ate at him most in the last days of Westchester. Killing Erik, and what would follow from that—if he’d managed to kill Erik first, he might have just brought the knife across his own throat too. Perhaps. If he hadn’t had David. Or—he hadn’t thought it all the way through, and now isn’t the time to start.  
  
“I need your help ruling, Charles. I _always_ wanted your help ruling. I told you that already. I told you that I want to rule _together._ ”  
  
“Then we seem to have hit a snag. I won’t help you subjugate humans. Or have you forgotten that I was married to one?”  
  
Instantly, Erik’s expression sours, and he plucks the scotch from Charles’ hands setting it aside. Strange, how that facial motion alone can age him, make those wrinkles at the corners of his eyes a little more visible. His eyes darken too, and the light goes out of them, turning them cold and frozen. “I’d prefer not to talk about your wife. You never should have married her at all.”  
  
He scoffs, tackling down the surge of anger that bursts through him. “I loved Moira, and you refusing to acknowledge that doesn’t change reality.”  
  
“I’m not refusing to acknowledge it. I’m refusing to let you make her into some kind of saint. She had flaws, you know. And she wasn’t good enough for you.”  
  
“And you _are_?”  
  
Good enough for him: as if he’d ever think of it in such terms. He’s no prize—so fundamentally flawed that sometimes he can feel the imperfections writhing within him. If anything, he never deserved Moira, and Erik—Erik deserves better than what he’s let himself become, warped by his hatred and his drive for power. They all deserve better than what any of them got.  
  
“Not at all,” Erik answers instantly. “But I’m a mutant. Like to like. And a match for you—“  
  
“Because I’m a bearer,” he finishes for Erik. “I hate to tell you, Erik, but any man with a decent cock could be a match for _that_.”  
  
“And because we’re _bonded_.”  
  
It really matters to him, doesn’t it? He’d always pegged Erik for the type of man who would be loyal to a spouse until death—when has Erik _not_ been loyal to someone he loves?—but it’s still more than a little startling to find that turned on himself. Even during those nights when he’d laid awake, wishing for impossible things and listening to Erik breathe, he’d never dared to hope that they might bond. He’d considered things like a quick tumble between the sheets, if he could manage to suppress his instinct to imprint—because he’d always felt that possibility in a way he never had with anyone else. Giving into it had just never been a viable reality.  
  
In the wake of those words, Erik surges forward, quickly enough—and so entirely unprovoked—that it catches Charles by surprise. He’s pressed back to the wall, his chest glued to Erik’s front before he can say much about it, and by the time he gets around to noticing how Erik’s hands have spread on the wall directly on either side of Charles’ ribs, he’s already blocked, and, unexpectedly, surprised.  
  
Working out what to do with his own hands is harder. There’s a spot of time where he holds them up, palms spread wide, but that becomes untenable quickly, and he drops them, molding them to Erik’s shoulders and digging his nails down into the fabric of that admittedly very fine military uniform.  
  
“Can you tell me any man could bond with you, Charles?” he asks, pushing closer, nuzzling his face into Charles’ neck and… simply breathing.  
  
“That isn’t what I said.”  
  
“Because you _can’t_ tell me that.”  
  
He can’t. That’s true. He never felt that spark of compatibility with anyone else in quite the same way he felt it with Erik. If not for what they would have discovered about him—and what that would have meant for his position as King of Westchester—he probably could have slept with other men without risking a bond. Not Erik, though: _kissing_ sparked a bond; actual sex would have been the end of life as he knew it.  
  
Turns out that kiss served just as well.  
  
“We’re a damn good team, Charles. You know we are. We won a war, and we can fix this world together.”  
  
“The theory is that, the easier a bonding occurs, the more genetically compatible two people are.”  
  
“When they’re a good team. Yes. That’s what I said.”  
  
“It’s not the same thing. Genetically compatible—all it really means is that we’ll be a good match biologically, that we’ll make splendid children, and that we have the capability to effectively unite to protect those children.”  
  
“You’re splitting hairs.”  
  
Oh, gods, he _is_. “Get off me.”  
  
“Do you really want me to?”  
  
The stir of interest in his pants says no. “Since when have you cared what I want?”  
  
“I care, Charles. Of course I do.”  
  
“Then call off this wedding and let me go back to Westchester.”  
  
“Because duty always trumps your own personal desires.” A huff, hot and ticklish against Charles’ neck. It leaves his skin feeling damp, itchy, demanding a good scratch. “No.”  
  
“You think I _want_ to marry you?”  
  
“If you didn’t have Westchester to worry about? Yes. Think back to that night in the tent. If you hadn’t been worried about losing your kingdom, would you have pulled away?”  
  
“But I _was_ worried for Westchester—and that won’t change.” When he can think, that is, which is proving remarkably difficult with Erik’s hands curving to the shape of his hips, moving him closer, proprietary, and the worst part is how electrifying that sensation is all along his veins, setting his blood to pumping and his body settling into that hold, content to be owned—by Erik, at least—when his mind—or parts of it—so ardently objects.  
  
“And now it isn’t a concern,” Erik breaths, and—there’s an end to any rational conversation right there, when Erik starts brushing his lips against the skin of Charles’ neck, not really pushing, but acting satisfied with the contact and closeness all on their own. “Rule with me _here_. We can do—Charles, have you even thought about what we might do together?”  
  
An innumerable number of sex acts, to begin, if his body has its way. Being this close to Erik is utterly enflaming, and it’s no real surprise that he’s finding it difficult to think when so much blood is exiting his brain and heading south toward other places. It’s like his hands aren’t even his own anymore, intent as they’ve become on flexing on Erik’s shoulders, feeling out the muscle and bone, both of which deserve extensive examination. Touching Erik like this—he’d known Erik was a physically fit specimen—he’s seen the man run through sword drills for hours on end, for gods’ sake—but there’s a difference in knowing and feeling those muscles alive and rippling under his hands. Very defined muscles too—probably honed enough that he could very easily hoist Charles up against this very wall and—  
  
Right. Well, that line of thinking isn’t going to take him anywhere helpful. And it’s unbelievably twisted to want those things from a mass murderer.  
  
Pushing Erik away still feels a little like kicking himself in the gut, though, even knowing what he knows. Is there any part of this life where he _isn’t_ going to be forced to practice self-denial?  
  
“I think you’ve done quite enough on your own.” It would have sounded more convincing if he weren’t so breathy, and—his face must be a rather embarrassing shade of red. Rightly so—as it turns out, he’d let his head fall to one side, offering Erik better access to his neck, and it’s no simple matter to right himself again with dignity.  
  
Erik doesn’t look any more pleased about being pushed away than Charles is about doing the pushing. Hands on his hips, chest rising and falling just a little too fast to play at unaffected, and drastically dilated pupils—Charles does have to give him credit: by this point he’s probably so sexually frustrated by the number of times he’s been rebuffed that it’s a miracle he has any self-control left at all.  
  
Serves him right. He pushed for this: he can live with the constant frustration.  
  
“I think—“ Erik pauses, taking a deep breath and biting down on one of his lips. “I think we need to sit down, across a table if it would make you feel better, and talk.”  
  
“So you can tell me you want to fuck me three ways from Saturday and that it’s your right to do it because we’ve bonded, I’m a bearer, and that’s all there is to it?”  
  
“I don’t think I’ve _ever_ said _that_.” He’s scowling now, and though he has his hands out, palms up, he hasn’t exactly managed non-threatening as well as he probably hopes. “Despite what you obviously think, I not only see you as a human being, but also as worthy of respect. For whatever it’s worth to you, in almost every way that matters, I think you’re my better.”  
  
“Except ideology.”  
  
“No. Your ideas, Charles—peace, equality, all of it—if the world were perfect, they would be exactly correct. And sometimes I’m inclined to think that you’re just too good for this world. It never deserved you, and what you believe—it’s too clean for a society so utterly flawed, but that doesn’t make it _wrong_.”  
  
Because he has to do it sometime, Charles pulls away from the wall and takes a few steps to the side, straightening the collar of his shirt and brushing his hands down the front of it, smoothing out wrinkles that aren’t actually there at all. Still, it makes him feel better: neat and precise and ordered, when everything else isn’t.  
  
Once he starts moving, he finds that he isn’t inclined to stop, and Erik lets him go, simply following him when he moves to the door of the outer chamber and pulls it open, drifting through with no real plan or direction beyond _get out of the bedroom_. Someday, he’ll burn that bedroom down, just for the sheer hate it inspires in him.  
  
And Erik thinks he’s intrinsically good. Obviously, Erik is no telepath.  
  
“Half your problem, Erik, is that you think I’m better than I am,” he remarks coolly, settling, for lack of any better plan, into a chair across the room from the bedroom door. Only once he’s seated does he actually notice what’s in front of him on the small table.  
  
A chessboard.  
  
But he’s still not going to play. And Erik can take the chair across the board from him, but he can’t make Charles move the pieces or give him his attention or any of the other thousands of things that must be going through his mind.  
  
Besides, he’s not done yet with what he has to say. Erik seems to know it: he keeps quiet as he lowers himself into the chair opposite, slowly, almost by inches, as though he’s expecting Charles to bolt at any moment. “You’ve seen me blow things up, plan whole battles that have resulted in thousands of deaths, help orchestrate an assassination attempt, and effortlessly read multiple minds in order to gain the information we needed. And you still think I’m—what? Too good?”  
  
“Yes, but, Charles…” He blinks, and for a moment he‘s almost pained, brows pinched together and his fingers twining, squeezing, where they hang in front of him, his elbows propped on his knees. “You understand war, and you understand death, but—you still believe there’s a better way, if you just try hard enough. And I’ve never seen you look another man in the eyes as you kill him. I don’t think you could go through with it if you had to look at him.”  
  
That’s just insulting. He’s a king in his own right, and he ran Westchester very efficiently, he’s renowned for his strategy, and Erik is going to insult him because he has a _conscience_?  
  
“I’m not insulting you,” Erik tells him quietly.  
  
Have his shields—? But, no. His shields are up fully, and Erik hasn’t tried to push past them. That answer—it’s just by virtue of him knowing Charles well enough to guess what he’s thinking.  
  
“Mercy, Charles, is a weakness that can get you killed if you apply it at the wrong time, but it’s also a virtue that many people don’t possess. I’m only trying to keep you alive long enough to use it.”  
  
“Mercy,” he parrots, leaning back in his chair and regarding Erik over the chessboard. They’re not playing. They’re _not_. “And when will I ever again be in the position to dispense anything of the kind? When I’m flat on my back in your bed?”  
  
There’s a slight tick at the corner of Erik’s eye. An admirable effort at remaining unaffected by that imagine—but that twitch gives him away. “I want you to handle the system of appeals.”  
  
“I—what?”  
  
Damn it, wrong reaction: it’s a point to Erik, and Charles had put him off balance just a second ago, and now he’s let him gain back solid footing. Damn it all.  
  
Erik smiles at him, thinly, but with enough warmth to keep it genuine and, in some fashion, eager. He’s kept his position from before, leaned forward, his elbows on his knees and his hands clasped in front of him, though he’s loosened the grip of his clasped fingers. “The king is the last appeal. You know this.”  
  
“Yes. The _king_. Not his—“ What _is_ he supposed to be?  
  
“Consort, if you like,” Erik finishes for him. “I didn’t think you’d appreciate ‘queen.’”  
  
“Quite right.” Gods, the potential humiliation. He’ll throw himself out a window before he lets that happen.  
  
“And, yes, the king is the last appeal—the last avenue for a pardon, if you will.” Erik tilts his head a few degrees to the side, waiting, but when Charles doesn’t interrupt him, he presses on: “As I’m sure you know, in most of the kingdoms before Shaw took over, the kings didn’t set precedent in the justice system. Any precedent created by the highest court’s decision would still stand for future cases, even if the king pardoned an offender.”  
  
“I’m aware, yes. Westchester had that system, though I think you know that.”  
  
Erik nods. “And appeals for pardon were submitted to you fairly often, yes?”  
  
“Almost anyone sentenced in the high courts would submit a request, yes. Most were only a guilty party seeking to override justice, but, very occasionally, someone had found himself hung on the letter of the law rather than on the spirit, and I was able to grant them a pardon where the court had to officially convict in order to uphold the laws. Instances like stealing because someone was starving, or something similar. I don’t know why you’re asking me this. I’m sure you already know.”  
  
“I _do_ know you oversaw things like that. But I didn’t know the details.”  
  
“Then you know that it’s the _king’s_ job to read those petitions and, if he finds one compelling, to hear the case in person.”  
  
Finally, Erik leans back, settling down deeply into the chair and perching one arm on the side of it, letting his hand hang languidly. “You know the liturgy about a bonded couple becoming one: if I get to use your powers, you ought to benefit from my position, don’t you think?”  
  
“I think I have a position of my own that you stripped me of.”  
  
Erik waves his hand dismissively. Or it could be that Charles is only projecting his own feelings into the gesture. “I’m delegating,” Erik says, completely ignoring the snapped-out complaint. “I want you to handle this. And, before you say no, think about the opportunities that it gives you: if you think a human has been unjustly convicted, you have the chance to overturn the sentence.”  
  
“Only if their case makes it all the way to my desk!”  
  
“The most controversial cases _will_ make it to you, you know. There are enough people who think like you—mutant and human co-existence—to ensure that appeals of that sort are going to be passed along to higher courts.”  
  
How can he possibly turn that down? It’s not enough. It’s not even _close_ , but Erik is right: if he can save even one person, he isn’t going to throw away the opportunity. And if he has to play at being Erik’s husband, it will be better if he has something constructive to do. It isn’t leading the army—like hell will Erik ever let him do _that_ —but it’s a way to not entirely lose his chance to keep on working for the kind of coexistence that _can_ work, if only people like Erik would give it a chance.  
  
“Should I take your silence as a ‘yes’?” But Erik is already grinning, and, if possible, he’s grown even more languid in his posture, going so far as to roll his neck to work out the kinks.  
  
“Any other scraps of work you’d like to assign me in your crusade to make me feel that I’m still in a position of influence?”  
  
All that manages to draw out is a light chuckle. “Household finances, obviously.”  
  
“Obviously.” He rolls his eyes, more than a little bitter.  
  
“Food distributions throughout the kingdom. Tax finance records. Censuses.”  
  
“I’m not your _secretary_.”  
  
Erik snorts. “I wouldn’t let my secretary touch food distribution. I need someone clever—really clever—to fix that. There are a large number of people starving due to the war. That’s always a reality after conflict, and I need someone capable of juggling our resources to make them stretch as far as possible.”  
  
“I did gather that, believe it or not.”  
  
“Then you know it isn’t a menial job—not one meant for my secretary.”  
  
Fair point. It’s only—the idea of so much paperwork, where he’ll be relegated to being safe and inside and nowhere near anything that might resemble the more active points of his former life—it already feels stifling, and he hasn’t even started yet. “Anything else?” he grits out from between clenched teeth.  
  
“Charity. Oversee the relief for the poor.”  
  
“Half the world is poor these days, thanks to your conquering and Shaw’s insanity.”  
  
“I never used scorched earth. I left buildings standing whenever possible, and I only destroyed crops if I had no other option to force a surrender.”  
  
“You must have perceived you had no other option quite often….”  
  
A shade of darkness curtains down over Erik’s eyes, and he looks troubled for a moment, drawing his gaze off Charles and angling it down towards his hands instead. “Less often than you’d think.”  
  
“Often enough.”  
  
Erik’s hands twitch. _“Too_ often.”  
  
It’s no credit to himself that he gives in to the acidic laugher boiling inside of him, but—Erik cannot possibly think that—that he has right to be sorry _now._ All those regions, decimated, all those people dead—it is so easy to apologize _after_ , once the bodies have been stacked and burned.  
  
But that’s unfair too. He can feel it through the laughter burning his throat, and the mire of his own guilt: he _wants_ Erik to regret what he’s done. That was never a question. And now here he is on the verge of mocking him for—telling him that it’s no good.  
  
All of this—it’s too much, pouring over him and turbulently washing the emotion out, only to send it crashing back over his head at any given moment. He never used to be prone to fits of temper, lashing out at Erik like this, before shutting down seconds later and feeling nothing but the icy, hard death of everything that ever made him who he is. He’s on the brink of it again, with this hot and cold desire to chastise and then turn around and snap at any apology he manages to drag out of Erik.  
  
“You look pale, Charles.”  
  
It’s said quietly, without demand, but Charles simply closes his eyes against the concern cradled in the words and sinks back into the chair. “I’m not feeling my best.”  
  
“You need to eat. If I call for something, will you?”  
  
A soft sound of clothes brushing against upholstery, followed by shoes on the floor, and then the feathery touch of a barely-there hand on his knee.  
  
When he opens his eyes, it’s to find Erik crouched in front of him, watching him quietly with an honest concern glazing his eyes. Child-killer. Murderer. And—Charles inhales deeply—he cannot afford to forget it. But… simply Erik. Especially when he’s like this, watching Charles with every indication of finding him the most precious thing he’s ever laid eyes on.  
  
“Charles? Please?”  
  
“I’m… not hungry.”  
  
That hand rubs toward the inside of his knee, begging for his attention. “When did you last eat?”  
  
Good question. Again, he looks away, rolling his head back into the curve of the chair. Each second of the cloth grinding into his skin is an anchor, pulling him back to the tangible and real, easier than Erik, who is so unreal that it’s often unbelievable. “I couldn’t say.”  
  
Erik swears under his breath. “Hasn’t anyone been checking in on you?”  
  
“You of all people ought to know that it’s very difficult to force me to do anything that I find disagreeable.”  
  
A heavy sigh: “I _know_.”  
  
“If it makes you feel better, Logan was very insistent. You ought to give him a pay raise, just for dealing with me. I’ve been rather awful.”  
  
Erik’s fingers have been lingering over Charles’ knee, but now they skate upward, exploring the curve of his upper thigh and hip, pausing over his waist—and settling there, fitting to the handle of his side, fingers flexing, once, twice, kneading at the flesh before going still and contenting themselves with holding Charles steady. “You could never be awful. Terribly ill-behaved, but not awful.”  
  
“Small difference.”  
  
“You know better. And to return to the point: you may have been able to bully the staff into letting you starve yourself—“  
  
“I wasn’t—gods, Erik, it wasn’t _that_. I just wasn’t hungry, all right?”  
  
Erik’s hand flexes again in solid reprimand, though it lightens to a caress toward the end of the motion. And Erik doesn’t believe him anyway: when Charles looks back, Erik’s stare is boring into him, solemn and serious and with a very fixed line to his mouth. “You know better than to try this with _me_.”  
  
Even during the months they’d spent after Shaw, Erik had been insistent that he care for himself. Thinking on it now—it makes him want to turn his face away and groan, simply over the concept of the sheer stupidity of it all. He and Erik never acted platonically—not in all the ways that mattered. He had let Erik bully him into things, and Erik had been wonderfully—horribly—attentive to Charles’ needs. They had been operating as a bonded pair even before the bond irreversibly took. If the world at large had known—if Charles had admitted what he was—there’s no conceivable way that anyone could have thought it anything but courting, the way Erik herded him around with a concentrated emphasis on his well-being.  
  
How nice to think on that: to truly, irrefutably—gods, he hates the permanence of that word—know that this behavior is nothing new.  
  
“Are you going to tie me down and then sit in front of me, just to be certain I don’t move until I’ve eaten it?”  
  
Erik’s mouth twitches in a fledgling smile. “I only did that once. And, if you recall, at the time, you thought it was funny.”  
  
That’s true. The heat gathering in his cheeks at the memory of it—that’s proof enough. Damn it all, though, the muscles under the heated flesh are aching from working to hold back a smile. “I liked your dedication.” Not a good idea to offer him encouragement, true as it may be. “That doesn’t mean I feel the same now.”  
  
“Oh? I’m not sure I believe you.” In one swift movement, Erik thrusts himself upward and back to his feet. He lingers for a few breathes, staring down at Charles, but once the space of acceptability has passed—whatever that means in Erik’s mind, when he so constantly violates convention—he drops a fond smile and moves to the door, turning the handle while he’s still several feet away and then pulling the door itself open with his hands. Such fine hands, long-boned and expansive, which explains how they can take up so much space on the edge of the door, holding it open while he calls to someone beyond, all politeness and clipped tones, as entitled to service as if he’d never started his life as a poor boy listening to his mother’s stories of better days.  
  
“I hope you’ll find some light soup to your taste,” he tells Charles once he’s closed the door again and begun his trek back across the room. “If you haven’t eaten properly in who-knows-how-long, your stomach might not take well to something heavier.”  
  
Granted, that’s true, and considering that he can’t form memories of full meals in his mind since, oh, a couple of months before Westchester fell, Erik may have a point. He _has_ grown rather thin—not dangerously so, because no matter what Erik thinks, he’s been eating functionally, but… perhaps not the pinnacle of health, either. One does have to keep to priorities, and his health simply wasn’t the focus of his attention—David, Westchester, so many other things were more important.  
  
Not that Erik understands, and a dismissive wave of Charles’s hand makes no impression: if anything, Erik tenses at the dismissal, and, contradictory man that he is, moves closer. “Would you like to go for a walk in the gardens later? I’ve missed hearing you tell me plant names and properties. I didn’t realize how much I’d learned over those months until I no longer had you there chattering in my ear.”  
  
“A tragedy, no doubt.” All sarcastic responses aside, however, a walk in the garden might be nice. He’s missed the open air. “Yes, all right.”  
  
Considering the implications of that, though—he ought to have declined. Erik will get ideas, start to believe that this can be companionable, like it used to be, the two of them discussing plants and medicine—although these plants will likely be decorative, not so much good for eating and healing. Still fascinating, of course, and when he’d had leisure at Westchester, he’d been trying to cross two strains of roses, see if he could combine the hardiness of one with the lovely color of the other. He’d been making progress.  
  
“After lunch then,” Erik says. He must be tired: he raises one hand to his face, kneading his fingers against his right eye and sighing deeply, the way he only ever does when he’s weighed down by something.  
  
“Conquering taking its toll on you?”  
  
Surprisingly, Erik doesn’t rise to the bait—he’s always been so quick to fight, even with Charles. Or perhaps that was only a facet of their relationship when he still had the ability to tell Erik ‘no’—when Erik had to _convince_ rather than _order_. Now, that spark for debate seems to have been replaced by the solid reassurance that, though he may bicker with Charles, there is no doubt that his opinion will ultimately prevail.  
  
“Do you remember that night a few months in when we were tracking the movements of Shaw’s army?” Erik asks him after a short pause, in which he tilts his head back and watches Charles speculatively down the bridge of his nose.  
  
Despite himself, Charles only barely manages to stifle a grin. No need to ask about what night he means. “The good old days of reconnaissance. Of course I do. Thinking that if we watched the army’s movements long enough, we could, based on that, triangulate the position of whatever Shaw was hiding.” He huffs out a laugh. “We just never thought Shaw would send his army to the middle of a swamp.”  
  
“We did find his lab, though,” Erik reminds him, full-out grinning. The expression relaxes the rest of him by default, tensed muscles easing with his good-humor. “Too bad the swamp was part of the perimeter of the territory the lab was in.”  
  
“It wasn’t the worst thing we ever dealt with.”  
  
Erik’s eyebrows shoot for his hairline, and, in his defense—but Charles is already inwardly laughing, and it’s _hard_ to finish that thought when, gods, that night had been _priceless_ , seeing Erik like that. But, really, though: in Erik’s defense, _he_ hadn’t had any fun at all. What a pity. Everyone _else_ had.  
  
“No?” Poor Erik—he appears traumatized by the memory alone. “ _You_ weren’t the one who took a wrong turn off the path and found himself neck-deep in muck.”  
  
Oh, that had been _glorious_. He’d given himself a cramp laughing at Erik, all covered in muck and very much resembling a wet and thoroughly displeased muskrat with tuffs of hair sticking up, run through with slick mud and smelling like he’d crawled out of a… well, a swamp. “It helped with the camouflage, you must admit.”  
  
“It certainly did. I think that soldier was convinced I was some sort of swamp animal right up until I knocked him out with the pummel of his own sword.”  
  
“I was tempted to push you into the swamp again the next day, just because that method of disguise had worked so well the day before.” Though, he’d been dissuaded when Erik had pointed out that, not only did he know where Charles slept, but that he slept there too—and if Charles ever wanted to again sleep with both eyes closed, he’d best dismiss the idea of a repeat swamp dousing.  
  
Charles had. Quickly. He knew Erik too well to suppose that he wouldn’t make good on his threats.  
  
Erik’s grin is practically illuminating by this point, and he’s leaned in a little closer, resting his elbows on his knees and clasping his hands lazily together. “And that poor soldier. If I’d known that letting you just _talk_ to someone for hours on end would be an effective form of torture, I’d have started letting you do the interrogations months earlier.”  
  
“It was not _torture_. We had a lovely chat on the ethics of just warfare, Shaw’s misguided views, and the importance of personal responsibility. He quite wisely decided that he’d best reevaluate his loyalties.”  
  
Erik lips twitch, and he offers Charles a long-suffering look. “He realized from talking to you that you were too brilliant for Shaw to outmaneuver given the circumstances, and he switched sides accordingly. That’s called hedging your bets, Charles, not seeing the error of your ways.”  
  
“I like to think that he reformed.”  
  
“And _I_ like to think that you drove him crazy with your incessant chatter to the point where he was willing to surrender the information you wanted just to stop you from trying to debate with him.” But Erik’s eyes are bright with humor, and the easy set of his shoulders is so overwritten with fondness that there’s no question that he doesn’t really mean it.  
  
That by no means implies that he’s willing to let Erik get away with such an erroneous comment: he can feel himself puffing up with indignation, drawing his shoulders back and huffing out a breath through his nose. “We were in the middle of a swamp. I was sorely deprived of intellectual conversation.”  
  
“You had _me_.”  
  
“As I said. I was sorely deprived.”  
  
Erik barks out a laugh. “Now that’s just unfair. After all the hours I spent listening to you? I ought to get some credit.”  
  
“You liked it.”  
  
No attempt is made to deny that. Rather, Erik seems to prefer chuckling noiselessly to himself, and staring over at Charles fondly, with all the good humor he’s always had when they bicker like this. Somehow, when he settles into this manner, his edges seem smoother, less abrasive, and it’s enticingly easy to play into his banter without fear of being cut by the sharper aspects of his personality.  
  
There are times when Erik can be unnervingly _fun._  
  
“I suppose I did,” Erik concedes. “I liked it even better when you made something constructive out of your chatter and managed to cross-reference the known positions of Shaw’s various battalions with each other and with the information given to you by the soldier in order to determine that the damned lab had been under us all along, beneath that blasted swamp.”  
  
The sheer look of horror on Erik’s face when Charles had told him that had kept Charles laughing for days. Occasionally, when he’d been engaging in leisure time in the tent, he’d broken out laughing with no obvious provocation—which usually earned him a pillow launched at his face, once Erik realized exactly what he was laughing at.  
  
“And _I_ liked looking at your expression when you realized that meant you had to go back into the swamp.” That had been priceless. It’s truly a pity that he doesn’t have a picture: two o’clock in the morning, in their tent, when Charles had told him, and Erik had—well, there’s no describing what Erik had looked liked.  
  
“I should have made _you_ lead the offensive.”  
  
He tosses himself back against the chair, crossing his leg over his knee and laughing. “I mostly _planned_ that offensive. That ought to have been good enough. Wasn’t that how we worked? I plotted, and you executed my plans.”  
  
A hint of solemnity slides up over Erik’s face—but just a touch. His eyes are remain amiable and wide, and his smile is generous. “A good team.”  
  
Damn it all.  
  
Charles goes still.  
  
There’s no denying it. But the thought hits him worse than a punch, driving the air from his lungs. One deep breath, then another, and only then can he reply: “We were,” he murmurs, looking away. He’s let himself be drawn in, lost in the past—  
  
“We _are_.”  
  
And so they’ve come to the point—to why Erik brought this up at all. Honestly, he should have known sooner what Erik was doing, should have realized that this couldn’t be a simple recall of a happy memory. Erik must have a point, because Erik _always_ has a point. He’s so incredibly goal driven that he hardly considers the means of arriving at what he wants: ends and means and all those questions of ethics are messes that he considers beneath him. Slaughtering people in multiple regions to achieve his goal and retrieve his mate? Acceptable, so long as he achieves the result he wants. Why should using a story to make his point be any different?  
  
It’s not as though he would understand that Charles had liked that story for the story alone and hates to see it sullied by an attempt to manipulate.  
  
That’s the result of it, though—they’ve run through the means and reached the ends. With the realization of Erik’s ploy, the levity that had seeped into their conversation has sluiced away, and the air has chilled between them. By this point, feeling the muscles of his face settling back into blankness is almost routine. But watching consternation and frustration pull Erik’s features tight—that will never feel practiced, and it’s far easier to look away than to examine why seeing that bothers him.  
  
Neither of them says anything more until the food arrives—brought by Angel, who exits the room with greater speed than she ever did before Erik returned—and Erik offers a quick thanks and arranges the meal between them after having cleared the chessboard away. Throughout it all, Charles doesn’t move, be it to help or to protest. He was foolish enough to give Erik encouragement in the preceding minutes: he won’t be doing it again so soon.  
  
Though the temptation exists, Charles doesn’t refuse the food—spiting Erik isn’t worth it when he really is hungry—and manages to consume a good deal of it: enough to realize that his stomach has shrunk over the course of the months he’s avoided eating properly. Erik obviously realizes it too, and he doesn’t push when Charles leaves some of the food uneaten.  
  
“Good?”  
  
“It’s fine.”  
  
“Better than that meal we had when—“  
  
“No more memories.”  
  
No, not again. There will be no allowing Erik to run his game twice: Charles scowls up at him from under his lashes, watching for the duration of a few heartbeats before he pushes himself up out of the chair and turns his back, heading off to go check on his son. He will not linger in times gone by and in an affection that should never have been his. Whatever he and Erik had, it’s gone now: they’re separated from each other by piles of corpses and blood and biology.  
  
But maybe not as separated as Charles would like.  
  
Certainly not separated enough to be deaf to Erik calling after him in all the ways that matter and that Charles shouldn’t want at all.  
  
He closes the door to the nursery behind him, blocking out the deafening roar that is Erik—that is _always_ Erik. It’s maddening, because Erik doesn’t have to say a word.  
  
Whether he wants to or not, Charles always hears him anyway.


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And, yes, finally we get some Raven!

They do take a walk in the gardens later, once the heat of the day has faded to more manageable levels. David comes with them, and though Erik attempts to hold him at one point, Charles jerks the baby away so violently, jolting several paces ahead of Erik, David clutched securely in his arms, that Erik doesn’t try again. That’s little comfort: the consternated curl of his lips is proof enough that this isn’t a topic that will stay untouched for long.  
  
Yet, in spite of all the reasons not to, Charles does have rather a good time. The plants are lovely, and Erik is very encouraging toward his idea to genetically alter the roses, even asking if Charles would like to have the Westchester roses transplanted to Genosha. It’s an obvious bribe, which Charles quickly declines on the grounds that he’s not certain the roses would survive transplantation, let alone a new climate.  
  
The rest of the afternoon proceeds in a similar fashion, Erik offering, and Charles rebuffing, with one notable exception: things for David. Being the intelligent man that he is, Erik quickly learns that the one thing Charles will accept from him is not for himself at all, but rather for his son. And it hardly matters that Charles isn’t receiving anything himself—seeing his son happy never fails to lift Charles spirits accordingly, and Erik has easily picked up on that, pouncing on it with all the ferocity of a predator and shamelessly capitalizing on the knowledge.  
  
Avoiding manipulation of that sort would be far easier if his son’s face didn’t light up when he’s handed a toy, or if the blankets Erik has brought for David appeared any less cozy when wrapped around the boy’s small frame. Charles puts him to bed that night amidst so many blankets that he could swear he’s unleashing his son into a nest rather than a bed, but David babbles happily and curls up, effectively killing any of Charles’ complaints. He can’t reject gifts for David solely on the grounds that they’ve been given by Erik.  
  
Try as he might, he can’t even always reject gifts for himself: he may have spent most of the day refusing, but small matters have slipped by him. There was the scotch earlier, and now, since Erik has coaxed him out into the living area, he finds he’s relatively certain that this will be another instance where he crumbles under Erik’s good intentions.  
  
“I found it in a storeroom—Shaw had an appalling number of items hidden away—and it had Westchester’s crest….”  
  
Westchester’s crest of the ruling house: simplicity itself, compared to the emblems of other royal houses. It’s only a circle with an X within it, the ends of the X stretching wide enough to touch the edges of the circles. Easy to recognize, easy to remember—and a stark reminder of the home he’s left behind. How very fitting that Erik has brought him a _sword_ with Westchester’s crest embossed in the metal of the blade just below the hilt. It’s always violence with Erik, isn’t it?  
  
Already, before he touches it, he knows what the sword means, and his fingers itch to close around it. Wrapping his hand around the pummel leaves him a little breathless; he pulls the sword up into the air where he can better test its weight. The edges, not surprisingly, have been blunted—there’s no way Erik would ever have given him a sharpened sword. As insulting as that is, though, having the sword in his hands is worth the slight. It’s a well-made piece of weaponry, but, if what he suspects is true, there’s good reason for that.  
  
“You know this is my father’s sword, yes?” No one else would have borne the Xavier crest.  
  
Obviously, Erik does—or, if he doesn’t, he manages to hide his surprise admirably well. But the quiet sympathy in his face, mingled with satisfaction, says that he _does_ know—and that it’s why he brought this to Charles in the first place. “I did suspect. Considering that Shaw was the one who killed him, and taking into account where I found the sword—Shaw had kept it on display in a room with a startling number of other artifacts that were also very obviously from men he’d killed.”  
  
Charming. The man was sadistic—there’s no denying that. He probably took daily walks through his gallery of dead men’s possessions, reliving their deaths and possibly getting himself off on it. God only knows what he did to his wife in the bedroom: a man like that is incapable of healthy sexual contact, surely.  
  
Sliding the sword back into its sheath, Charles sets it aside on a table and nods his thanks. His father’s sword, back with the person to whom it always ought to have belonged, if Shaw had never gotten it in his head to try his hand at conquering.  
  
“I thought it should be back with the person who has a right to it.”  
  
“Oh? Do I still have a right to it?”  
  
Erik’s hand darts out to grip the edge of the table, clenching viciously and draining the blood from his fingers. “You’re from royalty regardless of whether or not you’re a bearer. Of course you have a right to it.”  
  
He runs a finger down the edge of the sheath. “Most bearers aren’t encouraged to learn to use weapons.”  
  
Erik jerks his head up—he’d glanced away, presumably to hide whatever he was thinking—and glues his gaze to Charles’ face. “You aren’t most bearers. And I never much stood for that line of thinking anyway. Bearers ought to know how to defend themselves, same as anyone else.”  
  
“Hmmm.” Noncommittal—but, as vague as he’s trying to be, solely for the purpose of irritating Erik, he can’t hold onto the effort for long. It crumbles under the weight of his own emotion and conflict, and before he can rein himself in, he’s setting the sword aside on the table and directing his full attention toward Erik. “I’m not a particularly gifted soldier. You know that. Some people would say that’s because of my gender.”  
  
Erik grunts, shrugging. “You’re passable.”  
  
High praise from someone as good as Erik. “Yes. And nowhere near as talented as _you_ are.”  
  
“Charles.” A small smile licks at the corners of his mouth. “I’m _very_ good. You shouldn’t compare yourself to me.”  
  
He can feel the edges of his own lips tightening and curling upward. “And so humble.”  
  
“False insecurity is as dangerous as any amount of pride.”  
  
“I’m not sure I agree with _that_.”  
  
“No. Because _I_ said it. And gods know you couldn’t possibly manage to let yourself agree with me on _anything_. But, regardless, I’m a very good fighter. You shouldn’t compare yourself to me: when compared to most, you’re plenty competent.”  
  
“I think I liked the guns better. Pity that firearms are just too expensive to be more widely used.” Flexing his wrist, he twists it in a small circle. The weight of that gun in his hand had been comfortable, light—better than a sword. “I do rather like them.”  
  
“I liked watching you with them.”  
  
Of course he did. Possibly in the same way that Charles, though he would never admit it, even under pain of death, likes watching Erik with a sword. “Violence excites you?”  
  
Erik’s eyes narrow and his mouth slackens, making room for his tongue to peek out and run over his upper lip. “ _You_ excite me.”  
  
Two minutes more and Erik will probably have him on his back in bed. Time to wrap this up—and certainly to ignore the spark of heat in his own stomach. “I want to wear the sword at the wedding. I don’t have much left from my father, and it reminds me of home.”  
  
As if Erik would ever turn down a request that shows just how thoroughly Charles appreciates the gift he’s been given: and, yes, there he goes, eyes softening with satisfaction. “Of course.”  
  
Funny, how Erik makes it sound as though his assent was hardly a question when Erik knows very well that it’s going to cause a stir. A bearer wearing a sword? King of Westchester or not—former, now—people are going to see him as little more than a bearer—because they _will_ make the connection—being given in marriage, and not meant for anything so violent as fighting.  
  
But, then, Erik does often define unconventionality—at least when political necessity doesn’t make him play at obeying tradition.  
  
A knock at the door startles both of them, tearing Charles out of his speculation, though that might be a blessing: his hands are a little too unsteady, and though he’s tried to misdirect Erik, there’s far too much heat in the room for him to have been fully successful.  
  
“You going to answer that?” Charles asks, gesturing in the direction of the door, and—that doesn’t bode well: for some reason, Erik’s face has been wiped blank, and his gaze is zipping between the door and Charles.  
  
Worry? Oh, yes, in spades. Determination? Undoubtedly. Which, altogether, means this is something Charles won’t like, and almost certainly something Erik has planned.  
  
“What did you do?” he asks, taking a step backward. If he moves back now to the bedroom, whoever is at the door surely won’t follow him. All of Erik’s lackeys—save Logan—have proven in the last few weeks that they regard the bedroom as largely off-limits. Things might change with Erik here, but it’s worth a try….  
  
“There was one more thing we needed to talk about,” Erik says quietly, heading for the door. “For the wedding.”  
  
No. They’re done with that for tonight. And they’re done with whatever is about to come through that door, because if Erik is tense, lingering against the door before opening it—the knock comes again—there is no question that whoever is on the other side is not someone Charles wants to see.  
  
“Whatever you’ve planned, I suggest you re-think it,” Charles murmurs, letting the sound rumble low and threatening in his throat.  
  
Erik will not, of course, listen.  
  
“Just a moment,” Erik shouts out through the door, splaying his palm against the wood, just over the door handle, and exhaling heavily. One would think he’s weariness itself, with how he leans forward and rests his forehead against the wood. “You need someone to escort you at the wedding,” he points out after a moment.  
  
“Get a guard to do it. I don’t care. Or, better yet, let one of _my_ men do it. I assume you haven’t killed them. Alex? Armando? Sean?”  
  
“They’re all still alive. Detained, but alive. If they’re willing to swear fealty, they can serve in the army. But they won’t be on your personal guard, and if you want contact with them, it will occur in an informal, supervised capacity.”  
  
Unpleasant as it is to feel a sneer curdle his expression, he can’t hold it back. “Keen to choose my friends for me now too?”  
  
“Simply eager to ensure that you don’t have the means to start a rebellion. And they would never consent to acting as your guard—not in the capacity I’ve laid out for the job. You know that: they would never be willing to tell you ‘no,’ and they’ve already proved that they’re more than will to help you disappear.”  
  
“So I should content myself with being surrounded with your minions for the rest of my life?”  
  
Erik’s fingers curl against the wood. “I just told you that you’re welcome to see them socially, in a supervised capacity where I’m sure you can’t form a plan similar to the last one—“  
  
Not that Erik took the hint that ought to have been inherent in Charles actions when he formed that plan. “Maybe,” he snaps, “after I disappeared in the dead of night, you should have realized that I didn’t want a bond! And instead of razing the entire known world, you should have just _accepted_ that.”  
  
Erik stares at him blankly. “I will never accept that. We imprinted, it took, and you are _mine_. I can’t conceive of a gentle way to tell you otherwise.”  
  
No, he really cannot, possibly because one _doesn’t exist_. There’s no nice way to tell someone you own him, and Erik is a bastard for throwing that thought out there at all. It’s little wonder that Charles can feel himself turning red, flushing with anger, but that’s essentially the crux of his life now—and isn’t that just _wonderful_?  
  
“You’re going to hate me a good deal more in a moment, Charles,” Erik tells him, sounding as weary as the droop of his shoulders makes him appear. With any luck, he’ll drop from exhaustion, and this whole mess will be solved. And Erik would deserve it. Sadistic, entitled ass that he is—Charles grinds his hands into fists, glaring and glaring and scowling, and getting nothing from it, beyond a real sense of his helplessness.  
  
There is nothing he can truly do to combat Erik, save for ripping at him emotionally.  
  
And that isn’t enough—not when it doesn’t change anything.  
  
“Whatever you’re about to do—“  
  
The thought is never finished, nor does Erik seem to hear him: he’s too busy with finally dragging the door open, speaking quietly to the person on the other side before stepping back to allow them entrance.  
  
Well.  
  
Who would have thought? He _does_ hate Erik more than he did five seconds ago. Very astute of Erik to predict it.  
  
“I can’t believe you would do this.” What else can he possibly say? He totters backwards, steps faltering—but he draws up short, catching himself, locking his knees. He won’t retreat. There is no possible way to fight what is standing in front of him—you can’t fight heartache and memory—but he will never give either of them the satisfaction of watching him run.  
  
Erik and Raven.  
  
 _Raven_.  
  
“I didn’t think you were this cruel, Erik,” he presses on quietly, tasting the slickness of the words on his tongue, almost metallic.  
  
Behind Erik, the door swings closed, latching firmly, pushed by Erik’s powers. “I’m not trying to be cruel.” Maybe not, but he’s managing nonetheless, and no number of contrite-sounding statements, filled with weary emotion and a need to stop this constant grind of fighting—no number of those statements could ever be enough.  
  
And Raven.  
  
Gods, _Raven_.  
  
Standing before him, marvelously blue, naked as the day she was born, and with those brilliant yellow eyes of hers blinking too quickly, betraying her nerves. She lingers at the front of the room, to Erik’s right and slightly behind him, watching Charles warily.  
  
Not so confident when they’re face to face, is she? Not like she sounded in her note—the one that she _pinned to Moira’s shoulder_.  
  
When he doesn’t speak—when he only stares at her, frozen and unwilling to do more—she shifts her weight from one foot to the other, glancing at Erik, presumably for a cue. Seeing her like this—at least Erik ought to have some idea why Charles was so convinced he was behind the assassination attempt. Raven looks to him for guidance, craves his approval, waits on his word—it isn’t so unbelievable that she would have killed Moira on his orders.  
  
“I won’t have this conversation,” he says coldly, unlocking his knees and dragging his feet back a few more steps. So much for not retreating—but this way, it seems more of a protest, rather than turning tail and running.  
  
The door handle to the bedroom fuses itself closed mere seconds before Charles’ hand lands on it.  
  
“You need to at some point,” Erik says.  
  
So _Erik_ says—it’s certainly not something that’s high on _Charles’_ list of priorities. Not enough to do something so unbelievably petty like, oh, fusing a door handle shut, just to get his way.  
  
But… _but_ , if it has to be like this—if Erik will force this—well, it was always inevitable.  
  
Undeniable, that he must turn around, and fully unavoidable that his eyes are stinging with rage when he does—the kind of rage that he can feel twisting his insides and sending his blood pumping through his veins. No one is a good person when they feel like this, and mastering himself entirely is out of the question. But he will do the best he can, so long as he can—if only it weren’t Raven, standing in front of him, like she has the right, and—  
  
He never even had the chance to properly grieve, either for Raven or Moira. There was his son, and there was Erik, invading region after region. There was a funeral and questions of what Moira’s death meant, and there were the pitying stares and the knowledge that if she’d never met him, she’d still have been alive.  
  
Grief was never processed, and rage festered, hidden, turned bitter into something he could live with. His baby sister, the sibling he loved and doted on, raised, when his mother was too drunk, and Kurt hit them both, and Charles got in the way of his fists until he finally stopped hitting Raven at all and went after Charles. And how did Raven repay him? She left him, killed his wife, joined Erik. Terrible that he should think she should have to repay him for something like that, _no one_ should ever have to repay something like that, but… all those years, and they meant _nothing_.  
  
It must have been him. He’d done something wrong with her. But no number of sleepless nights—and there have been so many sleepless nights—have allowed him to discover it, and the whole topic has become acid, eating at his brain until he’s dulled and worn to it, aching and exhausted.  
  
But, if this is what it has to be, then: “I will always love you.” Wooden. So wooden, and route. Terribly so. But… he can’t feel his own voice, let alone his own heart. And—isn’t he allowed to hurt once in a while? “But I want nothing to do with you.”  
  
Raven’s lips twitch, and her hand clenches once—just once—at her side. “Charles—“  
  
He stands, stock still, staring blankly. “Get out.”  
  
Once the demand has been issued, that’s it—nothing more he can do. If Raven doesn’t listen—if Erik doesn’t force her to listen—Charles has no power to enforce anything, and even less to do anything so precocious as removing himself, since Erik has fused the door handle shut. A sitting duck has surely never felt so exposed as he does now.  
  
To no one’s surprise, Raven doesn’t leave—and Charles never truly entertained the idea that Erik would force her to do so.  
  
“Just as much respect for my orders now as you ever had, I see,” he murmurs. “Tell me, Erik, is she any better at listening to _you_?”  
  
A crueler person would enjoy watching Erik flinch, head tilting to the side and mouth peeking open—to say what? He’s spoken quite enough already. It’s thanks to him that Raven looks utterly unapologetic, as if betraying her brother and disobeying her king is something over which she should feel nothing. And she _had_ betrayed him. She’d walked away like he meant nothing, all in favor of a man she’d known for less than a year. Raven is no bearer—changing her appearance at will ensures that sort of freedom—and he’d never expected her to understand the trap that comes from being able to conceive children, but he hadn’t thought she’d do _this_ to him.  
  
 _I will never read your mind_ he had told her, but she has broken every single promise to _him_ —if words mean nothing at all, there was never any reason for him to hold to that promise so religiously; there is _every_ reason to want to discover what she knows, to understand why she went with Erik—and, gods, why she’d done what she’d done, why she’d— _Moira._ Why had she done that to Moira?  
  
As soon as he drives forward, slicing into Raven’s mind with his own thoughts, he can feel Erik mentally lurching after him, grabbing for him. Not quickly enough— _[go to Hell, Erik]_ —and all too quickly—too quick too slow—his thoughts latch on to Charles, wrenching his mind backward out of Raven’s, though not before Charles has dug into the memories closest to the surface.  
  
One good yank has those memories tumbling back into his own brain, precisely as Erik throws him out of Raven’s mind—and, for good measure, Charles goes stumbling back into the wall, crashing against it and crumbling down to its base. One legs shoots out from under him, and he topples, dropping solidly on his backside. He just barely gets one arm out to catch his weight, stopping him from careening into the ground at altogether too fast a rate for his bones to handle.  
  
Good show, all in Erik’s favor, unsurprisingly, but— _but_ … Charles has the memories he wants.  
  
Raven, young and then older, then blue, lying naked in Erik’s cot in the tent, and Erik, reaching forward—a gentle kiss; blood, the fall of Westchester, but before that, her eyes on Charles and Erik, watching Charles embarrass himself—had he really been so obviously acting as a potential mate? Jealousy, hurt, worry; and Moira, so human, taking up so much of Charles’ time, more than Raven had gotten of him in years; how could he betray those like him for the sake of a human? Ashamed of Raven, but loving a woman who—wait, what? Moira had never been responsible for Shaw getting wind of their final offensive—  
  
But the memory rolls onward.  
  
Erik’s hurt, Erik’s anger, floating in front of her face everyday, when he heard the news of the marriage, and then again when there was a baby—David—which should have been his. Charles and Erik together—it would have been perfect, and maybe then she’d have had a home where she didn’t have to hide, where, if Erik made a world for mutants, Charles wouldn’t worry so much about what humans thought, and then he’d think she was beautiful and not something to have to work around, because “they just don’t understand, Raven, but we can help teach them”—teach the man who had tried to bash her skull in at a bar when she’d slipped to blue? They will never teach anyone like that, and Charles will get himself killed trying, sleeping with a human—an untrustworthy human—but Erik would protect him, and maybe then they can all be a family—  
  
Charles leans over and braces himself on the floor, shuddering, over and over until his skin feels ground down to the nerves. He hadn’t known. How could he have known? He couldn’t have. There was no way to know that she resents him and loves him and worries incessantly for him, and that she was capable of murder, that Erik helped her along with that—  
  
 _“Your footwork is wrong. You’ll have better balance if you move like this—“ And Raven had shifted her stance, Erik’s hand on her elbow, and this time the knife had thunked solidly into the target._  
  
She’d wanted Erik too, before she saw that he and Charles had sparked a bond. She was in Erik’s bed, Erik had kissed her _back—_  
  
 _Gentle and sweet, fingers under her chin, tilting her face—_  
  
He presses his forehead to the floor, breathing wet and heavy, and it’s nothing short of a miracle that his last meal is still inside his stomach. He doesn’t—so close to losing it that it’s disgusting, hot and thick in his throat—keeping it down by swallowing over and over, all that extra spit. His mouth tastes horrid, like something chalky crawled up and died—how can his mouth possibly feel this dry when all that saliva is running?  
  
When Erik’s arms snake under his front and pull him upward, propping him up against Erik’s chest, it’s difficult to be surprised. As embarrassing as it is, the solidness that Erik provides is rapidly becoming necessary: standing on his own has become a problem, and he needs the support of the arms looped under his shoulders, curling up and around until Erik can lock his hands over Charles’ collarbones for the sake of a good grip. The fact that Erik’s grip doubles as a restraint—Charles can hit neither Erik nor Raven when held like this—must simply be borne.  
  
“Did you have to shove me out so hard?” Charles mutters, pushing himself back against Erik. If he could manage to get his feet under him and stop hanging like dead weight, he might be able to pretend that he has dignity left.  
  
Erik, however, is not the one who answers him: that dubious honor belongs to Raven, who, when Charles levels his gaze up to look at her, has her head clutched between her hands, eyes squeezed shut. Any amount of luck might dictate that she couldn’t muster a reply in such a condition, but luck has left him so long ago that he can hardly remember it anymore.  
  
“You promised,” she hisses, staggering forward, fingers still kneading at her temples. “You promised me you’d never read my mind.”  
  
Of all of them present, Erik is the only one not physically impaired, but, for once in his life, he’s silent, apparently content to do no more than drag Charles back away from the wall, going slowly in order to accommodate Charles’ fumbling and mostly ineffective attempts to get his feet under him and walk. With surprising care given the situation, he settles first himself, and then Charles, down into one of the armchairs: one deep enough that Charles can sit comfortably between his legs on the seat, Erik’s arms still wrapped up and over his shoulders.  
  
“You _promised_ ,” Raven says again, this time dropping her hands and popping her eyes. Her stare is glazed, dulled, but the haze is burning off, heated by the anger boiling just beneath the surface.  
  
She’s serious. That’s the worst of it. “I rather think any promises I made to you became null and void when you _murdered my wife_.” The weakness is fading from his limbs, and he can vaguely feel his muscles again, so much so that there’s the promise of soon being able to move. A lovely thought, given his current position.  
  
“You never should have married—“  
  
“You have no concept of what I should have done!” Too loud, too venomous, and he’s losing his temper, has lost it—there it goes— “You don’t have a damned clue about anything! I protected you. I—“ He lunges against Erik, feels the give and shift, Erik’s body molding with his, swaying forward. “It could have—could have—“ He can’t catch his breath. “It could have been so much worse. You whine about not being accepted, but whom did Kurt hit every time he lost his temper? Who wiped away Mother’s vomit? I fucking sent you to bed, told you not to look—“ She thinks she had it bad, but she doesn’t know what bad is. “And I had to hide, every second of the day, because I didn’t want to be what Mother was to Kurt, and, because I never made you see just what he did to her, you thought you knew better than I did, that you knew my life better. You don’t know. You don’t have the first clue. You’re spoiled. Gods, what some people would give to whine about the things you whine about, but you think life has done you a wrong, think _I_ have done you a wrong, when—“  
  
A hand slides up over his mouth, clamping down tightly and pulling his head back. “All right. That’s enough.” But Erik doesn’t sound angry—if anything, his voice cracks, near to agonized, and his hand isn’t quite steady. “I thought his mother and stepfather protected him.” The half-question is for Raven, not for him, Charles realizes hazily. “I was under the impression that they hid what he was, because they wanted him to have what they thought was a better life.”  
  
Like hell that was the reason. They never—but Erik is asking Raven, and as pale as she’s gone—a lighter shade of blue—she seems capable of answering. There are a few failed starts, where she gapes like a guppy, but she does succeed in pushing the words out eventually. “No. Kurt—Kurt hit him. And Charles—I don’t know. He always made me leave when Kurt got angry.” Made her. As if it were a punishment. She has no _idea_. “And his mother was always drunk. I don’t know why his mother hid what he was, but Kurt only did it because Charles’ mother made him. I don’t know how she made him do it. But he hated Charles.”  
  
The one good thing his mother ever did for him, ruined now. The why of it wasn’t even particularly complicated: she’d genuinely loved Brian Xavier, and she’d wanted to see her dead husband’s only heir on the throne, even if she’d been nearly unable to look at that heir as he got older—as he came to look more and more like his dead father.  
  
She’d never stood up to Kurt about anything else. Kurt, who had imprinted on her when she was already half-way into the bottle and rapidly sinking the rest of the way to the bottom. Kurt, Brian Xavier’s friend and advisor, who had acted as regent until Charles came of age.  
  
Granted, from the point of view of a madman concentrated solely on gaining power, he had a frighteningly large number of reasons for hating Charles.  
  
Against Charles’ back, Erik’s breath hitches. “Charles…” It’s breathed out against his cheek, soft and sad, fit for a funeral.  
  
If Erik would just let go, he’d give him the answers he wants. But that might be why Erik is holding on: he doesn’t really want those answers at all.  
  
Though the process is slow, Raven has begun to calm: her skin tone evens out, and she stops breathing so hard that her chest heaves—what the hell does she think she’s playing at, walking about naked?—and she’s able to settle into what passes for calm.  
  
“You never told me he was abused,” Erik accuses.  
  
By pulling one hand over Charles’ mouth, he’s loosed Charles’ right shoulder, giving him a small enough amount of room that he can drive his elbow back, aiming for Erik’s ribs. It isn’t quite enough, unfortunately, and though it does send Erik shrinking back, retracting his hand from Charles’ mouth in favor of grabbing at his arm, it does no significant damage.  
  
“If I’d wanted you to know, I’d have told you myself,” he snaps, twisting.  
  
Predictably, he’s held tight. But even Raven looks strangely disconcerted by how viciously he’s fighting. What, is the truth too much? The idea that maybe he wasn’t made for this after all, just by virtue of his capability to bear children? Imagine that.  
  
But Erik is firm: “This is something I _should_ know.” His hand unlatches from Charles’ arm, just as the other releases his shoulder, both coming down to encircle, half in a hug, half in restraint.  
  
Fine, then. If that’s what he has to deal with: he’s tired of being predictable, and if Erik wants to play at being civilized, then they’ll have a damned _tea party_. He’ll sit nice and pretty on Erik’s lap, limp and waiting for his sister to make the next move.  
  
Taking a deep breath, he leans back against Erik. And then: exhale.  
  
Erik is presumably so startled by the sudden easing of tension that, for a quick few seconds, he tightens his hold to the point of painful. That doesn’t last, but it’s proof enough that Erik hadn’t expected that. Good. It pays to know he can still throw the other man off balance. It’s about all he can do to him anymore.  
  
But this moment—it’s about Raven, not Erik. Or _more_ about Raven. He turns his gaze toward her, where she’s standing halfway across the room, watching them with a stunned lack of understanding. Her body reflects the expression: arms lankly at her sides, hands limp, nothing about her readied for a fight or even for flight. “I meant what I said,” he tells her, swallowing down the lump in his throat. This was his baby sister. Once. Maybe not now. Not when she doesn’t want to be. “I will always love you, but I want nothing to do with you. Get out. And don’t come near my son.”  
  
Never, not for any reason, would he trust Raven with David. She murdered Moira, and David has his mother’s blood. There’s no telling how Raven will see that, and, though it’s obvious even this early that David has some sort of mutation, that might not be enough to dissuade her from harming him.  
  
Strangely, that doesn’t appear to be what she expected to hear: she blinks, rocking back a step, and then staggering forward, almost tripping, and then simply settling on the in-between and going still altogether.  
  
Seems she’s not the only one to be surprised, unfortunately: Charles isn’t expecting it when Erik gives him a light shake, jolting him a few inches to the side. “No. That isn’t how it works, Charles. Raven is going to walk you down the aisle in two days, and, even if she weren’t, you need some sort of closure on this. It’s hurting you not to have it.”  
  
How very ironic: never anything new under the sun, is there? The wheel just keeps on turning, until the same bit comes back around, albeit at the hands of another: “So sure you know what’s best for me? That does seem to be a trend lately, doesn’t it? Are you planning to stab someone in order to prove it?”  
  
The hair on the back of Charles’ neck stands on end as Erik sighs, the breath tickling over skin. “I think it might be best if you left for now, Raven. We can sort things out more tomorrow. But I don’t think we’re going to get any further tonight.”  
  
Which, really, must just be code for “I’m going to try to calm Charles down, and then we’ll go back at this.” Well, no thank you. They can shelve this permanently, and if Erik thinks otherwise, he’s deluding himself.  
  
“I—yeah, all right.” Truthfully, she looks relieved to leave, and maybe sorry, guilty—who knows anymore. Their relationship is too fractured, and he looks away when she turns toward the door, closing his eyes and listening to the beat of his heart in his own chest. Nice to know that he still has a heart. Some people might question it, when he treats his own sister like this.  
  
Sister. Gods, sisters don’t do what she has. She _killed_ his wife—and what was that about Moira revealing information? That had never happened. Raven is—is she deluded?  
  
When the door clicks shut, he looks back up. He needn’t have bothered. No one moves. Neither he nor Erik, and for clear of a minute, they sit there, curled against each other, simply breathing and hanging on the edge of an emotional cliff. One step either way, and they’ll both go over.  
  
But at least a fall would be quick.  
  
Erik breaks the silence first.  
  
And Charles could swear he feels himself shatter.  
  
“She’s your sister, you know,” Erik tells him quietly, and, for the first time since Erik has pulled him down into the chair, he eases his hold, slipping one hand over to Charles’ ribs and rubbing gently. If it felt sexual, Charles might lash out, but the energy he’d need for it is far too daunting, and the touch is no more invasive than if Erik were trying to warm him up after he’d been outside too long and had gotten a chill. “But… I think I understand. You would have done anything for her. You did things to protect her that caused you a great deal of pain. And she repaid that by betraying you. Am I right?”  
  
“If you understand that so well, then why are you forcing me to be in the same room with her?”  
  
“Because you love her, and because it’s hurting you to resent her this much. And because she loves _you_. She begged me to let her see you, you know.”  
  
“Wanted to see her handiwork?”  
  
Not that it matters. Whatever Raven wanted, her actions are the only thing of consequence, and she earned the confrontation that was the inevitable result of a meeting. And—no, he’s tired of thinking, and maybe he just won’t do it any longer. He’ll lean his head back against Erik’s shoulder and let Erik hold him around the waist, solidly, as though he’d be protected here if he drifted off to sleep. No doubt he would be—from everyone but Erik.  
  
“She _loves_ you.”  
  
“She got so caught up in her own problems that she forgot anyone else might have some of their own. And—she’s done things that don’t make sense. She’s _that_ caught up. She can’t see reality anymore.”  
  
“Hmm?”  
  
Probably Erik has never asked for Raven’s exact reasons for killing Moira. Why would he? He got what he wanted regardless. “There was something in her mind about Moira giving away information about our final offensive. That never happened.”  
  
Erik stiffens. “Charles… _yes_ , it did.” His fingers slide down Charles’ waist, picking at a fold in his clothing, buying for time. When he’s done, he begins again, quieter this time: “Not intentionally. It was an accident: when you and I set off for Genosha, she panicked and disobeyed your final orders in favor of calling in more troops to meet us. When Shaw fled the capital, he knew exactly where we were going to meet him, and that’s why he was ready: Moira knew better than to transmit something over the radio, when it could be intercepted, but she was afraid, and she did it anyway. She’s the reason—“ His words bite off, choked by the steadily increasing anger. “ _She_ is the reason Shaw was ready for us. _She_ is the reason he was ready, that he had the opportunity to hurt you—“  
  
“You’re lying.” That’s wrong. Moira would never have told him. It’s—it would have been a stupid mistake, if it were true, when he’d told her not to send anything over the radio waves, but she’d have _told_ him….  
  
“Do you mean to tell me that you never considered how Shaw knew we were coming?”  
  
He squirms, trying to ignore the heat at his back. “There are a million ways that he could have found out. It doesn’t have to mean—“  
  
“But it does. I can show you the transmission records.”  
  
“Those can be faked.”  
  
“Why would I lie to you about this? I don’t need a reason to hate your wife, and you’ll continue to love her regardless of what I say, so why bother making something up? And Raven—she was back at command when we went to take Genosha. She’d know what happened there. She’d know _first hand_. Take a look at her memories later: see the memory from that day, if you need proof.”  
  
“No.”  
  
Gods, no. That isn’t—that isn’t fair. Why would Moira lie?  
  
Shame. Surely. It’s always shame. And she loved him—he could feel that in her mind, pulsing against his own. But he’d never looked deeper than that, never fished for the memories of the war. That might have been a mistake. It would seem such a little thing for Moira, after the war was ended, not to admit to that one mistake. He wouldn’t have been angry about it anyway—about her sending that transmission.  
  
Well, maybe. Angry in retrospect, but he would have forgiven her. It was _Shaw_ who put that sword in his leg, not Moira.  
  
In the long run, it wouldn’t have mattered—expect that now it does, because his lack of knowledge has come back to bite him.  
  
And Raven—it isn’t that she hates Moira merely for _that_ , but it’s another on a long list of reasons she doesn’t think Moira deserved her brother. To her—to Raven, because her mind had _reeked_ of it—she’d thought Moira had harmed him, had caused him to betray his own kind and society all in one go. Mutants and bearers, and a declining population.  
  
It was an irrational hatred that blossomed into murder.  
  
Gods. He tips his head back against Erik’s shoulder and chokes out a wheeze. Moira, Raven—damn it all. It wasn’t supposed to be like this, like this horrid thing that sits on his chest and squeezes out his breath.  
  
His wife lied. She was good, and she was kind, but she made a mistake, and she lied, and Raven hated everything about her far too much—and it was never Moira’s fault, that Raven had a lifetime of motivations to hate her, even before she met her, but, but—  
  
“I don’t want to talk about this.”  
  
No sort of verbal confirmation is necessary: Erik’s lack of refusal makes it clear that, this once, he’ll concede that. He _must_ know how much this is hurting. Is this what mercy is, coming from Erik?  
  
“Were you ever going to tell me your stepfather beat you?” If this is mercy, than it’s a strange, brutal form of it, switching to a topic like _this_.  
  
“No.” No one can accuse him of not being honest. “But you would have torn through my mind to find it, I’m sure. There are scars on the back of my thighs where he took a belt—the buckle end, of course—to me. And I’m sure you’ve seen a few on my back.” There’s one that runs from his shoulder down to the middle of his back. Kurt broke his skin open there when he threw him through a window. He’d been laid up in bed from that for quite a few days. A few other places—his right shoulder and just above his buttock—show signs of a whipping, though the scars are very faint, and Erik might not have noticed: Charles never did spend much time with his shirt off. They’d had enough temptations to be getting on with without adding skin to the mix.  
  
“I thought those were from—I don’t know what I thought they were from. But I knew you’d been around weapons all your life, and that you led an active lifestyle. I just thought—“  
  
“I never wanted you to think otherwise.”  
  
Erik’s hands cradle his ribcage. “Where else?”  
  
No point in lying now: he can tell or Erik will pull it out of him. This way, he might be able to alter the presentation. If Erik were to pull it directly from his mind, he’d see the memory itself, in all its stunning detail.  
  
“If you look closely, there’s a cut that runs the length of my right eyebrow. It’s mostly covered up. He punched me and caught me with his ring. Also, the palm of my hand: he shoved my hand down onto a hot stove, caught about half my palm on the burner. And there’s a scar on my elbow where the bone pierced skin after Cain pushed me down a set of stairs and broke my arm. Not much else other than that. Usually it was just bruising.”  
  
“Other than that,” Erik repeats dully. “Don’t you think that’s plenty?”  
  
Though they can’t agree on much else, they’ve apparently found accord on this. “More than enough. But it’s done. Kurt is dead and Cain is… missing, I suppose. There’s no one left to punish. But I think maybe I felt I was owed a little gratitude for taking that for all those years.”  
  
“You _are_.”  
  
Shifting his weight, he presses his cheek to Erik’s neck. Warm flesh, soft breath, and the comfort of a pulse: he closes his eyes. Indulgence of the best—and worst—kind, but it’s soothing, and it makes the memories easier to take.  
  
 _Biology_ , his mind whispers. _It’s inherent in a bearer to seek physical contact with his or her provider when upset or threatened._  
  
“Then why do you insist on taking my sister’s side?”  
  
“I don’t. Not in this. She’s selfish, not to realize what you’ve done for her—”  
  
There’s no fighting the hand that smoothes down his thigh, obviously intent on soothing—and he can’t quite muster the urge to protest anyway. “I shouldn’t feel the need for thanks. She never should have had to worry about being hurt—“  
  
“You’re telling yourself that, but no normal person with functioning emotions wouldn’t feel betrayed when the person they’ve given up so much for doesn’t stand by them.”  
  
“Sounds as though you’ve figured it all out.”  
  
“It’s not particularly _difficult_ to figure out. You’d understand the situation every bit as well if you’d let yourself—not to imply that it’s unreasonable for you not to want to think on it. No one expects you to be solidly rational all the time, you know. Some things simply run on emotion and instinct, as much as you might prefer otherwise.”  
  
Back to them again, then, running on instinct—rather like sheep right over the edge of a cliff in the fog. Or, in this case, headlong into a bond.  
  
“And you’re feeling better right now, aren’t you? When you let me touch you.”  
  
“Let” is such an interesting word: it implies that he will actually have a genuine choice in the long run. Somehow, that doesn’t strike him as likely: Erik hasn’t proved himself favorably disposed in the past to letting Charles rebuff him, and pulling away from him now would likely be met with similar results.  
  
“Would you like a lecture on how I’m now biologically wired to find your touch soothing?” he snaps, though he doesn’t bother to push away the hand still rubbing up and down his side, nor the hand that’s settled part way up his thigh, resting unobtrusively. “Or would you prefer to keep on believing you’re just that irresistible?”  
  
The insult fails spectacularly: Erik chuckles and presses a kiss to Charles’ temple. And so they’ve reached a line: he’s been letting Erik touch, but if this tips over into sexuality—too closely associated with kissing—that will be the end of that, for now anyway.  
  
Possibly he’s emitting some sort of signal—a sudden bout of tensing might explain that—that promises he’s about to withdraw his cooperation: Erik draws away and returns to contenting himself with resting his cheek against Charles’ hair. And, hopefully as a gesture of good will, he tosses one hand out to the side, unfusing the doorknob to the bedroom. More miraculously, he loosens his hold enough to allow Charles to clamber out of his lap and up onto his own two feet—although Erik keeps a hold of his wrist.  
  
“I know the science behind it,” Erik admits, “but I also know _you_ : if you truly hated me as thoroughly as you claim, you wouldn’t be so conflicted. You’d explain sex away as a biological necessity and wouldn’t hesitate much more about it. You’re only worried because you know this is more than biology.”  
  
“Seems you know my mind better than _I_ do.” When did he become this sarcastic? Surely he wasn’t always like this….  
  
“Am I wrong?”  
  
Again: no. But he’s a right bastard for thinking he can say this sort of thing.  
  
“How about this, then, Erik: if you’re so eager to talk about biology and what I may or may not feel, you can tell me tomorrow how well _you_ can separate the two.”  
  
And just because he can—because, really, he’s apparently this petty now—he reaches down between them, cups his hand around Erik’s sex, and begins to knead. It works better than he could have hoped: Erik’s head drops back against the chair, and his hand spasms on Charles’ wrist. Any hope Erik might have had in gaining back control would have been found in pulling away—and it doesn’t look as though he’s planning on _that_. Good thing, as that would not have been nearly so instrumental in making Charles’ point, and, besides that, it’s incredibly satisfying to hear Erik moan, low and long, putting him in the position—gods, just this once, thank you—to be controlled by his body’s needs. And while he may like it now? He’s going to be damn well embarrassed when he realizes how well Charles has played him just by using his body’s reactions.  
  
About time he figured out how Charles feels on a daily basis.  
  
With admirable—at least _he_ finds it admirable, thank you—grace under the circumstances, he shakes off the last lingering traces of the lethargy brought on by being coddled and tugs his wrist out of Erik’s sex-slackened grip. The transition isn’t perfect, and it’s rather unpleasant to pull away, but the results are worth it: he gives Erik one last good squeeze, marveling at the rather impressive hardness under his palm, before he draws back completely.  
  
His own breathing is elevated to far higher levels than he’d like, and if there were a mirror present, it would probably show him how flushed he is, but he must be better off than Erik, who looks a little as though a train has mowed him over. Despite being dressed, his sprawl over the chair is almost indecent, having sunken down more deeply into it, hips canting up against Charles’ hand. There’s no hiding the large bulge in his pants.  
  
“Do let me know how that goes for you,” Charles tells him primly, very deliberately wiping his hand off on his pants—not that there’s anything on it—and fixing Erik with a raised eyebrow. All he receives in return is a dazed, fairly shocked—more than a little appalled—stare. “I’ll be delighted to hear all about how well you separated your, ahem—“ He looks pointedly down at Erik’s crotch, “physical needs from your feelings for me. Do have a good night, Love.”  
  
It’s fortunate that Erik has unfused the door, as Charles’ exit would have been far less dramatic if he’d found himself stalled. As it stands, though, he’s able to move quite easily into the bedroom, and then, from there, into David’s room. All in all, it’s an excellent plan: Erik won’t pick a fight with him here, not with David present, and he most definitely won’t come after him demanding that he finish what he started.  
  
No, he will have to wait until morning.  
  
Grinning, Charles curls up in his nest of blankets. After over a year of Charles’ absence, surely Erik has learned to use his right hand. If not, then he really had better hope he’s as comfortable as he says he is with riding out the less… _convenient_ aspects of biology.


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm really sorry I haven't answered comments from last chapter yet. I'll try to get through a few tonight and tomorrow, but my schedule is crazy this week, and it's not conducive to fandom pursuits (believe me, if I could find a way to play around with stuff like this story all day I would, but until then I suppose I'll have to keep paying the bills through other means). 
> 
> But, as a general response to most of the comments: you all hated what Erik was doing before, and you'll probably hate him even more in this chapter. So, just a general disclaimer, since at this point I'm realizing how frustrating the whole situation must be to the readers: I've always been interested in how authors portray the slow breakdown of a character's spirit, nearly as much as I'm interested in the human spirit in general, and it's ability to overcome that kind of trauma. I wasn't confident in my ability to write that kind of situation, so, naturally, I thought the best way to learn would be to try to write it. In sum: Charles is in for a really, really rough go of it. Things will get worse before they get better. But... they will get better. It just might take a while.

Never have the words, “We need to talk” precipitated anything good in a relationship, insofar as Charles is aware. And when they’re uttered first thing in the morning by a stern-faced man crouched just above you, trailing his fingers gently down your face, the odds that anything good will come of those words decrease exponentially.  
  
In the pale morning light, Erik’s features appear soft, bordering on reverent, and the small smile pursing his lips meshes with the breaking light, washing out the threat that’s obviously inherent in his words. Though he’s only a few feet from Charles, he’s so utterly unobtrusive that Charles has to blink a few times to clear the sleep from his eyes before he realizes that Erik’s presence cannot possibly be benign. The realization itself is ineffectual: his body can’t hear what his mind is heralding, and though he watches the morning light play across Erik’s face, he doesn’t move from his cocoon of blankets; pushing Erik’s hand away feels out of the question.  
  
“Well,” Erik’s voice rumbles, dipping down into something more pleased. Pressing his free hand to the ground to steady himself, he goes to his knees, shuffling until he’s on the edges of the blankets and in Charles’ reach. “I’m pleased to see you’re feeling more agreeable this morning.”  
  
That would wrongly imply he’s feeling anything at all. Not much is penetrating this hazy drift of warm blankets and morning sun, coupled with the last vestiges of a very deep sleep: even just having Erik near, he’s slept better than he has any night since he ran away from Erik in the first place.  
  
Imagine if he were to actually allow for physical contact. He’d probably be so blissed out as to never wake at all.  
  
Two weeks ago, he would have considered that a good thing, but that was before Erik found his son and—David.  
  
Though David is just starting up, beginning with a low cranky cry, that won’t last long: once he’s realized he’s properly awake, that cry will escalate into a squall, and no one in the vicinity will have a moment of peace until David has gotten his morning bottle—and a bottle it has been, ever since Moira died.  
  
No better motivation to get Charles moving could exist: the noise of his son blots out the sensation of Erik’s hand, dampening it to the point where he’s capable of drawing back and gathering his arms under himself, poised to lever himself up and go collect his baby.  
  
But by the time Charles is perched on his knees, blankets remaining draped over him and spilling over and off his back, Erik is beside the crib, reaching down—  
  
No one gave him permission. Erik never _asked_.  
  
Charles is certainly awake _now_.  
  
“Put him down,” he snaps, digging his toes through the blankets and to the floor, just enough to propel himself forward and out of the mess of bedding, to where he can reach uncovered flagstone and get a grip sufficient to push to his feet.  
  
But Erik is already leaning over the crib, casting shadows where the sun hasn’t managed to burrow into the crevices of his face and smooth them out into good humor. There’s nothing wrong with his hearing—he must have heard Charles—but he doesn’t acknowledge him, intent on the infant before him—on reaching down and gathering David up with large, capable hands, tucking a blanket about the child as he pulls him in to cradle him against his chest.  
  
“Good morning, _Liebchen_ ,” he murmurs, pushing a curl out of David’s eyes. The baby gurgles at the movement, and, apparently noting that this is not his father, becomes fascinated with the unexplored human within his reach: he dives after the finger, latching onto it and promptly beginning to chew it with an audacity that Erik has killed other people for daring to have.  
  
Admittedly, not babies. Even Erik is capable of differentiating.  
  
Right?  
  
Possibly he is—he has to be, it’s just irrational fear saying otherwise—but that’s not enough. In no way does that _ever_ mean that Charles will settle for seeing Erik hold Moira’s child.  
  
“Give me my son.” He’s up and standing now, not that it makes much difference: Erik turns to face him with a distinctly unmoved attitude. If he cares at all that Charles’ gut has begun to grind with anxiety, he doesn’t show it, but only keeps on with David, bouncing him lightly and allowing the baby the freedom to keep gumming at his finger.  
  
“Gods damn you, Erik, _give me my son_.” He won’t panic. Panic won’t help.  
  
Or it might: something in his voice finally causes Erik to jerk his gaze up, infusing it with a dose of concern as he turns it on Charles, as sharp and shrewd as he is with politics and war. And war—it’s never had that link that goes deeper, that Charles can see hanging in his eyes, assessing, _mattering_ in a way that love and lust roots deep, but that war could never touch.  
  
“Why don’t you go call the maid to make the bottle,” Erik suggests.  
  
Absolutely not. As if he would ever leave Erik unattended with David. As it is, he’s on the verge of yanking the baby out of Erik’s arms—and he would, might have done already, if not for the terror that in the struggle David might be dropped, or hurt, or worse.  
  
“ _Give him to me!”_  
  
David, attuned to his father’s emotions, begins to squirm and fuss, and, gods, it’s not as though Charles can help it—his anxiety spikes even higher. His baby is crying. Why’s he crying? What’s wrong? Erik can’t keep this up. If he does—if he doesn’t give David back, and David starts crying, and Charles has to listen—he can’t. There’s no possible way he can listen to his baby crying.  
  
“Charles,” Erik says slowly, splaying one hand protectively over David’s back and beginning to bob back and forth, shifting his weight from foot to foot in an attempt to soothe David, “he’s all right. He isn’t hurt. He’s crying because he’s hungry, and because he can feel that you’re upset.”  
  
Yes, because Erik is doing this, ripping his son away from him with no regard for anything. What if he suddenly realizes that this is Moira’s baby he’s holding? Would he—? No. Erik—he would never. He wouldn’t hurt a baby. But, but—  
  
The first creases of genuine worry begin to carve themselves into Erik’s brow. “Charles—honestly, it’s all right. I won’t hurt him. You have my word. All right?” Also experimental, as though he isn’t sure what will effectively coax Charles out of his panic.  
  
“No,” he spits back, shaking his head violently. “Give him to me!”  
  
There is nothing in this world that will make this all right. He has to have David back, can’t fathom anything else, for all the world like a horrid mass of panic that just _shouts_ , “ _Now_ , Erik!” But that was him doing the shouting, wasn’t it?  
  
And somehow he’s crossed the space between them, pushed up against Erik’s side in the coldest contact they’ve probably ever had, and shoved his arms under Erik’s, twining them around David’s back and clutching on as securely as he knows how.  
  
It will be okay, it will be all right, all will be well—  
  
David, familiar with his father, goes easily enough, throwing his arms out toward Charles and wrapping his arms around his neck. His crying doesn’t completely taper off, but it does reduce to sniffles and the occasional sob, much like Charles’ own panic: random spikes with every stab of recent memory. Erik, with David in his arms, as though David belonged there, as though Erik had every intention to put him there again.  
  
He must intend to do that. No mercy at all in this, clearly: he’s observing Charles, his hands perched on his waist, weight on one foot, posture sloppy. He’s only ever that imprecise when he’s frustrated, much in the same way he acts when he’s physically worn out and hasn’t achieved the results he wanted.  
  
What, then, was his goal with all this? What hasn’t he achieved? It’s terrible to think.  
  
“Hush, Darling,” Charles murmurs into his son’s hair, holding him close and breathing in the babyish wisps of freshness. The stinging in his own eyes is irrelevant. “My darling baby boy. It’s all right.”  
  
“There was never anything _wrong_ , Charles.”  
  
So Erik says. He doesn’t know. He isn’t a father. He doesn’t know what it means to hear his son cry, to know that his son is in the arms of the man who condoned a good woman’s death, who killed so many countless others. Truthfully, Erik doesn’t seem to know that he _is_ that man—to comprehend that he _could_ be a danger.  
  
“It’s okay, it’s all right,” he mutters over and over again.  
  
The bottle does need to be made. David is plenty warm enough, and it won’t be much of an effort to bring him out to the main room to ask the maid for the bottle, and perhaps it will even have the benefit of waking David properly—putting him in a good humor, that is. The first attempt clearly wasn’t sufficient.  
  
“We’ll go get you your bottle, Love—“  
  
Only for Charles to smack into a solid chest.  
  
He hadn’t heard Erik move. Or… he might have, but he’d been so set on ignoring him, and—yes, he’d seen him out of the corner of his eye, but he’d assumed Erik had given up and was going back to the main bedroom.  
  
This wasn’t supposed to happen: Erik standing between him and the door, blocking him.  
  
Charles takes a step back, looking up at Erik icily. He’s met with an equally immovable stare. “I need to get him his bottle.”  
  
Erik folds his arms over his chest. “And so you do.”  
  
“Let me by.”  
  
“No. I’ve let this go on too long already.”  
  
This early in the morning, he hasn’t the patience for Erik’s games. “ _Move,_ Erik.”  
  
“I would never hurt him. What makes you think I would?”  
  
“Get out of my way!” In his arms, David begins to fuss again, wiping his face against Charles’ neck. Mucus, how very unpleasant—such messy little creature, babies are. Entirely worth it, yes, but still a bundle of near-perpetual uncleanliness.  
  
Taking a step to the side, he does his best to brush by Erik, only to have both his upper arms caught in a solid grip. Erik doesn’t jostle him—probably out of concern that he might drop David—but he’s entirely stalwart. Steel might be more forgiving.  
  
“You aren’t the first bearer to lose a partner and then re-marry. I’m told it’s normal for you to instinctively try to keep any children away from me, simply because your instincts are warning you I might associate them with your previous spouse and harm them. But you ought to logically know better. I would have expected you to be rational enough to move beyond that. And it’s also true that once you’ve seen me interact with your son, those biological fears ought to fade, which makes me think that it’s more than just instinct. Do you really think I’d hurt him? David… looks very like you, Charles, and I—I’ll treat him like one of my own, you have my word.”  
  
As if that doesn’t have the potential to be worse. “I don’t want you near _any_ children I might have, whether or not they’re biologically yours.”  
  
If Erik insists on lying with him, then children are unavoidable. But he could never be persuaded to give Erik ready access to the children—not when Erik will raise them to think as he does. Little darlings who hate humans right from the start, who believe violence solves things—and if they’re bearers, they’ll believe they’re less; and if they aren’t, they’ll believe bearers are under the jurisdiction of their guardians. No matter what, Erik will teach them wrongly.  
  
Immediately, Erik’s expression shutters closed, snuffing out all his emotion. “That isn’t an option.” Quiet, but so, so lethal.  
  
Charles takes a step back, and though Erik doesn’t let go, his hold does expand, pulling his arms out straight, allowing Charles a fraction more breathing room. Good. He needs it. Though, breathing might be a little optimistic: this must be what an asthmatic feels like, unable to take in enough air. Perhaps this was how they felt after the storms, before the woman cleared the dust and smog away. No one could breathe, and everyone died.  
  
Erik could do that again. Erik could do that to _him._ Erik could do that to David.  
  
“Don’t—“  
  
But Erik’s fingers tighten, bruising now, sinking into flesh in spots of pressure. “We’re going to go give David to the maid for a while, and you and I are going to talk this out.”  
  
“Like hell—“  
  
But it’s not as though he has much of a choice. Even if Charles didn’t have David in his arms, Erik has always been better at hand-to-hand combat, and any physical confrontation will inevitably end in his favor. Before, it didn’t matter so much: Erik was on his side, fighting along _with_ him, and any combat between them was restricted to training or play-fighting, Erik batting him around and roughhousing to work off the stress of a day. On one particular occasion, he ended up over Erik’s shoulder, with men from both their armies watching and dissolving into laughter when Erik tossed him into the lake next to where they were camped. It had been _fun_ then, and never with the underlying fear that Erik’s physicality was meant to actually force him into something.  
  
Not like now.  
  
Not like how Erik pulls him forward, ignoring Charles’ clumsy stumbling, brought on by trying to resist while keeping a grip on his child. He can yell, can curse—and he does—but Erik gets behind him, gets one hand on the base of his neck and the other around Charles’ upper arm, and yanks him along.  
  
Charles spares a moment of sympathy for the maid when she sees them. She’s a nice girl, young—not as good as David’s nanny, but, then, who is as good as Jean?—and while he doesn’t trust her with David, it’s not due to any latent malice that he can detect, but only on account of how inexperienced she is—so easily subdued, if it came to that. She wouldn’t know what to do in an emergency, be it if someone were attacking her and David, or something as simple as David swallowing wrong and choking.  
  
Today, she pauses from where she’s setting the table with a light breakfast, startling at their approach. Her large brown eyes are wide enough to catch the glare of the light, blotting out the brown on one side from Charles’ view. It gets worse when she sees Erik’s face and immediately tries to stutter out some sort of respectful greeting, though, really, the attempt is useless when paired with her rapidly paling skin.  
  
She needn’t have tried: Erik has no interest in her, outside of tasking her with directions. “You will remain here, in this room, and watch my son until I come back for him,” he tells her, not bothering with the courtesy of actually looking at her, caught up as he is in prying David out of Charles’ arms.  
  
No way in hell. Absolutely—gods, no—and David is screaming, and Charles can hear himself snarling back at Erik, twisting, fighting. Impossible, really: Erik gets his hand up around his throat, and Charles chokes, gurgling and lunging after David as he’s pulled out of his arms, and then choking harder when that rams him directly into Erik’s palm. That’s his gag reflex, entirely involuntarily, or so science says, and it must be right: he gurgles, coughing, enough that Erik yanks his hand back away, blinking in shock, which is rather odd, paired with a scowl. Oh—had he not realized exactly what he was doing? What an unpleasant surprise that must be, to realize, that, yes, actually, choking is dangerous.  
  
Dangerous or not, Charles swallows past the ache in his throat and digs his fingers into Erik’s arm, grabbing for David—but he’s pushed back again, this time by Erik’s shoulder, as Erik balances David with his other arm, transferring him into the care of the maid, who, by this time, is outright terrified and so white that she must be on the verge of passing out. She could pass out while holding David. He could be hurt. And Erik is just going to hand him over to her—why doesn’t he _think_?  
  
This isn’t safe for his son, and that’s really all that matters—“Damn you, let me go, Erik!”—in the scheme of things. All the bruises in the world—he couldn’t care a bit about it, or about Erik’s hands latching onto his upper arms, lifting him clean back off his feet. No, that’s—he’s overbalances and falls, tipping back: Erik catches him, one arm under his back, and before Charles can get his feet under him, Erik starts dragging him backwards.  
  
“Let _go!_ ”  
  
David’s cries rip up his eardrums, and he’s reaching back out for Charles, face streaked with tears and mucus, as he screams and screams and screams.  
  
He sounds _devastated_. His baby—his boy—he’s _scared_ —  
  
“Don’t—don’t—“ Flipping, squirming—if he could get Erik to drop him, he could run. Go after his son—but pain shoots up his arm, just like a real fight. Maybe he hadn’t thought Erik would really hurt him. Maybe this doesn’t actually count. But it _feels_ like a fight, and Charles might not be as talented as Erik, but he isn’t _helpless_.  
  
He has no leverage, no way to get his feet under him, but he has his teeth, and those sink into flesh as well when he’s halfway horizontal to the ground as they do at any other time. Latching down right on Erik’s forearm—and Erik, like the good soldier he is, knows to push into it, choking Charles with his own flesh, though Charles doesn’t let go, grinding down until he can’t take it anymore and the taste forces him to pull back.  
  
“Damn it, Charles—“  
  
Yes, exactly. Damn _everything_. Mostly, though, the fact that Erik doesn’t let him go, even when Charles has broken skin and drawn blood. All he can hear beyond the rushing in his ears is Erik’s harsh breathing, his son’s screams, and the sound of the door striking the wall when Erik throws it open; then, slamming it shut behind them.  
  
And then—only then—is Charles finally dropped down to the floor.  
  
“What the hell, Charles?” Erik snarls, clapping his now free hand over the sluggishly bleeding bite mark on his arm. From between his fingers, the already purpling skin peeks out, stained with blood.  
  
Charles merely stares at him from his position on the floor, panting heavily. Erik tore David away from him. Erik took his _son_.  
  
“Let me _out_ of this room.” He hasn’t tried to the door yet, but he doesn’t need to—it will be locked, or possibly just fused shut.  
  
Erik looks at him as though he’s gone mad. “He’ll be fine for fifteen minutes with the maid while we hash this out. Because we clearly need to.” He rubs his hand over his arm again, flinching when his fingers brush bruised and bleeding flesh. “What the fuck _was_ this, Charles?” he asks, waving his arm in Charles’ general direction.  
  
Nothing at all compared to what he’ll do if Erik doesn’t give him back his son. “The least of what you deserve.”  
  
His words are not meant to soothe Erik in the least, but, for whatever reason, they have the effect of grounding him, pulling him down and out of his rage: he frowns, fingers pausing from where they’re drawing through the slowly coagulating blood. “Your neck…”  
  
Is that guilt in his voice? Charles snorts with as much derision as he can pack into the noise. It’s far too late for guilt. Though, Erik must not think so: he moves forward and crouches down, reaching out, presumably to brush his fingertips against the bruised flesh.  
  
No. Absolutely not.  
  
In a flash of vicious movement, Charles slams his hand against the bite mark on Erik’s arm, drawing a startled yelp, and, more pragmatically, forcing Erik to retract his attempt to touch.     
  
There. That works. Or at least it makes his point: blustering out a few more swears, Erik tilts his gaze up, mouth slack and confused, though his eyes are sparking with anger—with enough electricity that Charles would believe in Erik’s ability to electrocute him at any moment if he didn’t know that Erik could kill him in so many other, simpler ways.  
  
It’s the matter of seconds to swallow down a deep breath, but that’s enough time for Charles to draw back in the tattered remnants of his self-control. “If you _ever_ again think you can rip my child out of my arms, I will make you sorry for the day you were born. And you are going to go and get me my child _right the hell now_ , Erik, or I swear, I don’t care what you threaten me with, you will have to hold me down for every second of our wedding night, because I will _never_ willingly let you touch me. How’s _that_ for a bond?”  
  
Watching Erik pale is a little like watching an army retreat. And in this case? It feels _amazing._  
  
But Erik never was so easily swayed. “We need to talk first.”  
  
Charles shakes his head. “Every _second_. If you don’t believe me, _try_ it. Our wedding night—”  
  
“Tomorrow.”  
  
Damn it all. Damn it, damn it—he can’t, can’t think. Not tomorrow, surely not tomorrow. Too soon….  
  
He clenches his stomach around the rolling nausea. What does it matter if it’s tomorrow or a week from now? It’s going to happen.  
  
“Every. Second,” he repeats as steadily as possible.  
  
Apparently Erik does believe him—and it’s gratifying to know that Charles still has a modicum of power, even if it’s just from bargaining with rape. But he’ll do it. If that’s what it takes to get Erik moving, to get him to open the door and go collect David, to tell the maid whatever it is that he tells her—and Charles _does not care_ —he will do it over and over, as many times as it takes.  
  
He will do anything for his son: for the beautiful, sobbing child that stretches out his arms the moment he sees Charles, clinging and wheezing into Charles shoulder as Charles wraps him up in his embrace and tries to ignore the wetness in his own eyes.  
  
“I’m here, Darling,” he whispers. “Daddy’s here.”  
  
And he will make Erik sorely regret it if he ever again offers cause for David to doubt those words.  
  
It’s several minutes before either Charles or David calms enough for anything resembling rational conversation. During that time, Charles can hear Erik puttering about the room, even leaving it, coming back a few seconds later with some of the dishes the maid had been setting. Probably he’s hoping to coax Charles into a better humor with breakfast. And, yes, there—he comes close at one point, dangling David’s bottle in front of Charles, until Charles snatches it up and offers it to his son, ignoring Erik entirely other than that.  
  
But eventually the bottle is gone, and David has stopped crying. But Erik is still here—and waiting.  
  
“You know, when I told you this morning that we needed to talk, I only meant about last night. I was going to tell you that in the future I’d expect you to finish what you started. But now we apparently have more pressing matters to discuss.”  
  
Charles doesn’t look up from where he has his face pressed to David’s hair. He still hasn’t bothered to get up off the ground, nor does he particularly plan to anytime in the near future. There’s little need: David has been fed, he’s content to be held by Charles in any location, and Charles himself has no desire for any of the culinary offerings that Erik has laid out on the table. Better yet, staying put will irritate Erik, and, in the space of the last few minutes, that appears to have somehow become the focus of his world, second only to his son.  
  
Erik sighs, biting out a curse. “I’ve tried reasoning with you. I’ve tried giving you things I thought you’d like. I even tried _asking_. You don’t respond to any of it. Do you want me to be cruel to you, Charles? Is that it? I don’t—gods, I don’t know what to do to make you happy, and….”  
  
What he wants is for Erik to stop talking and to leave—as if he will ever be so blessed. Erik razed the known world to get to him. He isn’t going away.  
  
Footsteps echoing off the walls alert him to Erik’s approach, but only when a pair of legs appears in his line of vision does he bother to consider exactly what that means.  
  
“I won’t physically fight with you every time something like this happens,” he murmurs, voice strained. “I absolutely will not. The idea of—“ He breaks off, exhaling so deeply that Charles feels the movement of the air. “Do you think I _enjoy_ hurting you? That I don’t feel sick looking at your neck and seeing bruises there? I can’t—“ Another pause, and Erik’s foot scuffs at the floor: fidgeting, that can’t bode well. “I cannot live in a world where I have to physically hurt you to get you to do as I say, and I refuse to try: there will have to be other types of consequences.”  
  
“Ones where you can’t _physically_ see the scars?” he snaps, staring down at the floor and Erik’s feet. He’s being ridiculous, refusing to get up off the floor. And he Does. Not. Care. “As long as I _look_ whole, you’ll be satisfied?”  
  
For a moment, Erik doesn’t answer. No doubt he’s winding up again, getting ready to dial the fight back up to its previous intensity: he never could turn down a challenge. “You know that isn’t what I meant. You always know. And you’re being deliberately provoking. And I—” He takes in a deep breath. “I’ve had enough. I _have_. Now get up off the floor, and come sit at the table like a civilized human being.”  
  
“Why? You’re the one who threw me on the floor in the first place.”  
  
In the edges of his vision, he can see Erik’s hands clench. “You know all the right buttons of mine to push, don’t you?” he asks after a moment, voice low, barely pushing down the obvious frustration. “Not this time, Charles. We’re going to do this differently.”  
  
Oh? Are they? Funny, no one consulted _him_.  
  
“Get up off the floor, go sit at the table, and eat your breakfast, or I’ll have one of your soldiers shot.”  
  
Erik wanted his attention; he’s certainly gotten it.  
  
“You can’t—“ he protests, head whipping up as he tries to see Erik’s face, to see if he’s genuinely serious, because surely he cannot be. He said he would only keep Charles’ men safe if Charles consented to have sex with him, but he’d never threatened to personally have them executed in direct correlation with Charles’ behavior.  
  
But Erik only stares him down, expression stony and unmoved. “There is very little I _can’t_ do. Do you think I want to force your cooperation this way? I don’t. But until you’re willing to cooperate with me, I’ll give you orders, and you’ll obey them, or I’ll kill your men. End of story.”  
  
“You’re _insane_ ,” Charles breathes out. Surely not—surely Erik cannot be serious.  
  
Erik draws back, turning toward the door. And—is he preparing to go give the order? No—  
  
“Ten seconds, Charles, or I’ll tell a guard to bring one of Westchester’s soldiers up here, and I’ll have him shot in front of you.”  
  
He _is_ serious. Deadly serious, in the very real sense of that word—in the sense of lead in the pit of Charles’ stomach, weighing him down and poisoning him same as reality is doing. Erik really _is_ this person. The man Charles loved—this Erik—and the man he loves— _still_ this Erik—gods, he loves and hates a killer and a man without mercy when his hand is forced.  
  
And Charles will hate him until the day either of them dies, surely. There are smiles and chess and laughter and want, but he will always see this—Erik’s face, drained of empathy, concealing a will that’s found a way to effectively steal Charles’ choice.  
  
Fuck him. _Fuck_ him.  
  
But Charles goes: he drags himself up off the floor and moves to the table. He sits with David on his lap and begins mechanically spooning out food onto his plate. It could be anything. He can’t begin to imagine what he’s putting onto the dish. He can’t fathom caring.  
  
Seconds later, Erik settles across from him. “Thank you,” he says quietly.  
  
Why could he possibly think he needs to say that? Like a marionette, guided by someone else, Charles spoons a piece of food in his mouth and chews, not tasting a thing. He couldn’t say what it is that he’s eating. And he’s shaking—his hands, they’re terribly unsteady.  
  
“Prove to me that you’re willing to be reasonable, and I’ll rescind this, Charles. I don’t _want_ to be your _master_ : I want to be your _husband_.”  
  
How nice. His actions certainly don’t show it.  
  
Dead soldiers—he’s seen enough to last a lifetime. More killing from Erik. Panic at the thought of hitting Charles again, with no other way to make him mind—is that what happened to Erik? Did he panic?  
  
When he gets no response, Erik sighs—how many times is that in the last few minutes?—and pours Charles a cup of tea. Just the right amount of milk too.  
  
Charles doesn’t move to drink it. It will go cold before he puts a finger on that cup.  
  
“I love you. I want this to be a partnership.”  
  
He tried to take David. He will take him again, and surely they haven’t hit on all the issues that could trigger that. If Charles refuses to teach David to think like Erik, what then? Will Erik take David away altogether? Threaten to have someone shot if Charles doesn’t start teaching David as Erik wants?  
  
“I wish you’d say something.”  
  
Wishes are so seldom granted. Better that Erik learns that now than that he expects Charles to voluntarily fulfill any of his hopes.  
  
The chair creaks against he floor: Erik’s fidgeting pushed it. His agitation is practically smothering the room. It’s so bad that David has gone quiet, hiding his face in Charles’ shirt, his hands plucking at the cloth. Open and close, open and close. He has the loveliest little fingers.  
  
“Charles.”  
  
Just his name. And it sounds beseeching, to the point of pleading. But it’s not an order, and Erik has pushed them to the place that Charles is hardly going to answer to anything else: not when it might signal voluntary cooperation. He will not cooperate with a man who would issue orders like Erik is doing.  
  
Another bite. Then another. The food is ash in his mouth, but he keeps on staring at the plate. White china. It would probably shatter beautifully if he were to throw it at the wall.  
  
What can he do? Helplessness is pushing in from everywhere, and his pride won’t let him concede, but there is truly _nothing left to do_.  
  
Erik must realize it too, though possibly somewhat in the reverse: he can force behavior, but he can’t legislate thought or affection, and his silence now—Erik isn’t a particularly talkative person, but this is heavier, like a stone around both their necks—says that he knows that all too well: that in gaining the behavior he wants, he’s executed any chance at affection.  
  
He’s drawn a line: which is not—not _entirely_ lacking in use. Knowing how far he can push before Erik snaps, and what Erik will do when he _does_ snap—he can prepare for it, perhaps work around it.  
  
“I thought we might go away for a few days,” Erik says after several minutes, in which forks and knives—mostly Erik’s—clanking on the plates is the only sound. “After we’re married. Have some time to ourselves. We can’t go too far, of course—the government is still unstable and I need to be within a day’s journey in case I’m needed—but maybe one of the islands off the coast?”  
  
Westchester is relatively near the sea, and he’d once told Erik how, when he was particularly overwhelmed, he’d take a day to travel down to the seaside to walk and sit, and to observe the plants and the wildlife. Occasionally, he’d sketched them, tried to plot out plans to cross breeds, just for the fun of it. In another life, he could have been a full-time scientist. Blessed to study the gifts of the gods or some other such nonsense. He’s never been much for the religion: not when there was only one, perpetuated by Shaw.  
  
Erik ought to agree with him on that: spending one’s early life in a camp as a result of being born into the practice of another religion in a world where that is now illegal is an inescapably unpleasant experience, or so Erik has told him.  
  
“Charles?”  
  
Oh, yes—the question. Erik asked one. Seems he’d just dismissed it in his mind as unimportant—though, in this case, it doesn’t appear that Erik is willing to let it fade into silence.  
  
“Whatever you want,” he answers dully, because, really, isn’t that what this is? What Erik wants. Not what he, Charles, wants.  
  
Wrong answer: Erik sets his silverware down with stressed precision, so tense in his movements that it’s a wonder his muscles are holding up. “Would you prefer somewhere else?”  
  
“I don’t care.” Wherever: Erik will fuck him regardless of the location. Perhaps he ought to stipulate that he’d like a mattress? If this has to happen, it would be preferable if his back had support, and gods forbid Erik try something spontaneous like sex on a beach. That would be _horrid_. No. Here is fine. Here in Genosha. “I don’t care to go anywhere. I’d prefer to stay here.” Staying dull, dreadfully toneless.  
  
Erik’s chest draws up tightly, pushed up by the large breath he’s just sucked in and held. He lets it out slowly through his nose. “Not just for sex, Charles—to go somewhere, spend some time together. Talk. Like we used to.”  
  
Talk about how Erik will shoot his men if Charles doesn’t do as he says? No, thank you. “I don’t care.” Surely Erik cannot find anything offensive enough in that answer to threaten an execution?  
  
It would seem not—though that doesn’t stop Charles’ words from sending him into a slow unfolding frustration: he scrapes his chair back from the table, tossing down his napkin, and, with precise, controlled steps, he pivots on his heel and marches out of the room. No words, no shouting, nothing but Erik controlling his temper and presumably leaving before his frustration gets the best of him.  
  
Again.  
  
\------------------------

The morning passes achingly slowly. Erik doesn't return to the nursery, and calling that a blessing in disguise would simply be injustice: it's nothing short of a blatant blessing. If Erik were to return, he'd surely have a comment on the way Charles gathers up David and sets to pacing the nursery, over and over until his nerves are strained as tightly as his muscles. Having Erik return to needle him further would... push things to a point where they would be intolerable, and for once Erik must know that: he stays away.  
  
Nothing changes until about an hour before noon when the sound of Logan’s voice drifts in from the room beyond the bedroom. It’s by sheer chance that Charles hears it: he spends as little time in the bedroom as possible, but he’s come in to grab a change of clothes from the wardrobe: it’s an hour before lunch, and if he waits much longer to get dressed, he’ll be faced with enduring the very careful lack of questioning looks from the staff.  
  
Thus far, Erik hasn’t discovered that the space under the door handle’s paneling has been hollowed out. It’s only a matter of time until he does—once he actually bothers to touch the door to open it, rather than using his power, he’ll feel the wrongness of it—or maybe he has already and is merely ignoring it—but for now it lets the sounds from the main room filter into the bedroom if one is close enough to the door: which Charles is, having detoured there on the way to the wardrobe, merely to check the state of the room beyond.  
  
“--don’t like the king breaking his own rules.”  
  
Yes, that’s Logan. After the last week under Logan’s guard, there’s no mistaking that voice.  
  
Nor is there any mistaking Erik’s more cultured tones. “I’m not breaking my own laws.”  
  
“Oh, yeah? So you’re not marrying someone everyone thinks is a non-bearer?”  
  
Good to know that is indeed causing Erik problems. Even more satisfyingly, it takes Erik a moment to answer: his glare must be truly spectacular. “I’ve given my word to Charles that I won’t explain.”  
  
Logan laughs. “Look, either he is or he isn’t. He can’t get just kinda pregnant.’”  
  
“Yes, I’m aware.” Spoken dryly. “And the people will get their answers eventually. But for now they’ll have to trust that I’m not violating my own laws.”  
  
“Hate to tell you, but people are pretty short on trust right now. Westchester would still like to wipe you off the face of the planet, and, yeah, Genosha and the southern regions think you’re all right, but they had _Shaw_ , so anything with more brains than a pet rock is a step up. You let Westchester riot, and the rest of the North might just follow along.”  
  
“We conquered them once; we can do it again.”  
  
Such a lovely theory. Erik wouldn’t know diplomacy if it came up and introduced itself politely.  
  
Even Logan seems to realize how absolutely despotic and foolish that comment is: “You know, I’m starting to see why when you and your hubby worked together, he did the planning.”  
  
The sound of something tapping on wood: Erik must be drumming his fingers. “Yes, that’s not an option at the moment, I’m afraid.”  
  
Too right it’s not.  
  
“Yeah, I heard you two had a little kerfuffle this morning.”  
  
Kerfluffle? What in the world is _that_? Charles leans a little closer to the door, dropping down to his knees to get a better angle: this will be something worth  
hearing.  
  
“Oh, _did_ you?” It comes out drawled, strung out with Erik’s displeasure.  
  
Apparently, Logan either doesn’t get the hint or simply doesn’t care that it’s been given. “Even a blind man could see that he’s depressed. But I’m sure you already knew, being all in-touch with your feelings and shit, right?”  
  
For the love of any sanity left in the world, that better have been as sarcastic as it sounded. Erik and well-considered feelings do not belong in the same mode of thought: his could be the face of a thousand sloganed missives, all reading _repress, repress, repress._ Your mother died at the hands of a madman when you were a child? Well, then bottle all that hate and hunt the madman down. But gods forbid you’d _deal_ with that rage. Most any emotion Erik has manifests as anger, and when he _does_ attempt to share his feelings, it’s clunky and forced, and so thoroughly slingshotted into the extreme opposite medium that he manages it with all the grace of a bull in a china shop. Because contrary to what Erik believes? Massacring the known world is not an appropriate method of expressing love and commitment. He’s so used to repressing his hurts and wants—and, yes, all right, granted it’s explicable when showing Shaw any of those things ended with Shaw dangling them in front of Erik and then yanking them away. But when he _doesn’t_ repress those things, he goes so far in the other direction that it’s _dangerous._  
   
“What makes you say he’s depressed?”  
  
Logan wisely doesn’t comment on Erik’s ridiculous lack of perception. “The whole time you were away, he stayed curled up in a nest of blankets next to his son’s crib.”  
  
“I’m back now.”  
  
Yes, Erik Lehnsherr, with his magical healing presence. Charles resists the urge to punch something, simply for spite.  
  
“Think that might have made it worse, actually.”  
  
Might? Did. _Did_ make things worse. At least when he was curled up in that pile of blankets, no one was potentially going to be executed.  
  
“Go on.”  
  
“Really, Lehnsherr?” On a name basis now—and Erik is allowing it. Interesting. “Are you really this blind or are you just hoping for another set of eyes to size things up?”  
  
For a few moments, nothing but silence drifts through the door, and Charles begins to tense up, waiting for the sounds of flesh meeting flesh, or, rather, metal meeting flesh. But it doesn’t come. Instead, after Charles has lost count of the time—can’t be over a minute—there’s a harsh exhale of breath, and then Erik, murmuring, “The latter.”  
  
Logan whistles, low and long, between his teeth. “That bad, huh?”  
  
“He won’t let me near David.”  
  
Who _is_ Logan that Erik is willing to confide this much in him? Erik never spoke of him before, not during their time hunting Shaw. But this level of trust would indicate something deeply ingrained.  
  
“Don’t know why you’re surprised. Ain’t it standard for bearers to want to keep a new mate away from a kid they had with someone else? He’s probably running on instinct. Can’t really blame him for that, can you?”  
  
“Charles knows me. The effects are supposed to be far less when the bearer knows and trusts his new mate. He _must_ know logically that I would never hurt David.”  
  
As if it were that simple. Leaning a little closer, he flattens his hand against the door and presses his ear directly to the wood. Hopefully, Erik won’t find this in his mind later: he’ll have to bury it under innocuous memories that Erik wouldn’t think to look through.  
  
“It’s not exactly an easy time for him either, though, is it? But, hey, I don’t know: I don’t have a bearer, and I sure as hell don’t have kids. Marie is plenty.”  
  
Erik snorts. “You think I didn’t do my research? You _did_ have a bearer.”  
  
Silence. Even from behind the door, it feels as though Erik has tossed something out between them that should never have been touched. Indeed, when Logan goes to speak again, his voice is deeper, and that pleasant amicability has vanished: “Then you know it sure as hell ain’t the same thing.”  
  
“Yes,” Erik says quietly. “I do.”  
  
“Yeah.” Soft, almost sad.  
  
“He’s supposed to want me.”  
  
Logan scoffs. “Who says he doesn’t?”  
  
“ _He_ says he doesn’t.”  
  
Which, unfortunately, seems to mean nothing to anyone anymore.  
  
“Pretty sure he just doesn’t want the life that comes with you.”  
  
“He was a bearer before I met him. _I_ didn’t do that.”  
  
“Maybe not. But you stopped him from being able to hide it.”  
  
At some point, Charles’ legs have gone to sleep, but he can hardly find the energy needed to shift them. It matters so little, when Logan is right, and when it’s this life that he could never abide. If he and Erik were other people, people who didn’t matter, in a society where being… what Charles is—if it didn’t mean he had no choices, what would it have been like if they’d been able to be together? They could have found a place somewhere, perhaps a house outside of town where Charles could have practiced science, and Erik could have done the sort of metalworking that he’d sometimes done at night in their tent, simply to relax. Maybe they could have had a child, who could have grown up not feeling either superior or lesser, but something right in the middle, with Erik’s eyes and Charles shortness, with a good temper and a smile for both of them on the most surprising of occasions when Charles could look down at their baby and know, he’d done right. He’d done something in life. A beautiful baby to change the world.  
  
Like David. But he got that from Moira—not Erik. And maybe he loved Erik best and first, but Moira will always, always be the one who gave him that.  
  
“All right. Yes, I did. But, _he_ imprinted on _me_ too. If I’d never gotten him back, I would never have been able to bond with anyone.”  
  
Sorry, so sorry—he will always be sorry to Erik for that. He hadn’t meant to do that, to take that away from Erik.  
  
Logan just scoffs. “You never wanted anyone else.”  
  
“No. I didn’t. But it should—” A pause, and the sound of a palm smacking on the table. “It should _matter_ that he was the one who sparked this, just as much as I did. And instead I have to go so far as to threaten to execute one of his former subjects just to get him to join me at table—” Erik breaks off, breathing hard. “Gods.” And again: “Gods, I don’t see how to fix….”  
  
It’s a space of a few seconds before Logan answers, and, when he does, it’s not helpful at all: “Don’t know, Bub,” he says quietly, but he sounds sympathetic. “I don’t know anything at all about this.”  
  
No, Charles thinks, sliding down the floor, legs splayed out beside him, neither does _he_. That’s why he’s sitting here, shortly before his wedding, wishing very badly that he’d died in that final fight with Shaw: before David was born into such a twisted world, before he knew what Erik was capable of, and before he hated himself quite this much.


	14. Chapter 14

Erik does not bother him for the rest of the night, save for once: he opens the door to David’s bedroom just as Charles has finished putting his son down for bed. The light from the main bedroom falls in a pale blade across the floor, creeping up toward the crib the wider Erik opens the door.  
  
Charles turns to face him, but Erik merely stays at the door, leaning against the frame, watching him.  
  
“Who would you feel comfortable having watch David tomorrow?” he asks quietly. He doubtless wants Charles to move back toward the main bedroom, but his rigidly set stance doesn’t indicate that he expects it.  
  
Best that he does not: Charles won’t be moving into that room a second before he has to do so.  
  
The question, though, is a pertinent one, and one that he’s been thinking on for days. There is almost no one he’d trust David with, but he did send his son off with his soldiers, simply because it was his best option, and if he has to put him in someone else’s care, perhaps he might do the same thing again.  
  
“Kitty Pryde,” he tells Erik, turning as he speaks and putting his back to the crib. “She can watch David, and your soldiers can watch _her_.” There is surely no other way that Erik would allow one of Charles’ former subjects to care for David—not when he tried to send David away with those same people in the first place.  
  
Objections aside, the logic of the choice is clear: Erik may worry that Kitty will try to take David and run, but he would have to concede that she’s equipped to protect David, if the need arises. Kitty is trustworthy too, on a personal level: she’d been the daughter of a maid in Charles’ house, and when she’d manifested, the woman had left her and disappeared. Charles had taken Kitty in, given her lessons and, eventually, choices—and when she’d wanted to join the army, he hadn’t objected. She’d always been something of a favorite of his: so sharp and clever, but kind right down where it counted.  
  
The silence stretches out between them for long enough that he frankly expects Erik to refuse, but, by some miracle, he doesn’t: “All right,” he murmurs, lingering, though when it becomes clear that Charles is going to say nothing further, he turns and goes back through the door, shutting it behind him.  
  
And so Charles is left alone until the next morning.  
  
Would that he were left alone for longer.  
  
Instead, he passes a restless night in his nest of blankets—the last night it will be allowed, surely—only falling into a state deeper than a doze just as the sun is rising: it can’t be long past that before he’s woken again by a hand stroking down his cheek and through his hair.  
  
But it isn’t Erik. He could feel Erik, humming close to him: a muted bond is still a bond, and he will always know when Erik is close.  
  
This isn’t Erik.  
  
And if it isn’t Erik….  
  
In a flurry of motion, he throws himself awake, panic jumpstarting his heart and strangling the sleep out of him. Up, up, up, and ready to—  
  
Raven.  
  
“I’m sorry,” she says, pulling back a few inches, her eyes wide and brilliantly yellow in the morning light. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”  
  
Once, he would have sensed her too, would have registered her as a non-threat, just as he does with Erik—the bond won’t allow anything else—despite everything. But Raven has proven she is capable of murder, and if he’s hesitant to let Erik near David? He’s downright horrified by the prospect of letting _Raven_ near him. He will _not_ let Raven near him.  
  
“What do you want?” he breathes out, getting his knees under him—his joints pop, courtesy of sleeping on the floor—and shoving himself up to his feet. Before he manages to fully stand, he’s already swaying toward the crib, putting himself between it and Raven.  
  
She obviously notices, those astounding yellow eyes of hers—such a beautiful mutation—tracking his movements: she frowns when he presses back against the wooden slats, staring her down. “Charles—“  
  
“I asked you a question.”  
  
That doesn’t mean she’s keen to answer it. It doesn’t mean much, actually: she doesn’t have to do anything he asks, and she can just as easily run to Erik as fight with him herself. She might prefer that, actually: let Erik force compliance out of him, leaving her free to pretend she’s never directly harmed him.  
  
But no person who thinks herself guiltless would be so slow to reach after him, to push forward with the conversation that’s flagging between them. Her features twitch, and she opens her mouth, but she pulls back at the last moment, drawing into herself like that lost little girl she used to be. This can’t be how she acts for Erik: perhaps it’s just his presence—her brother, once upon a time, and shouldn’t that _mean_ something?—that makes her regress into someone with a conscience?  
  
“You need to get ready for the wedding.”  
  
The wedding. Gods. He clenches his fingers against the wooden slats, hoping for splinters. It would feel better than having to think. “And I take it Erik sent you to help?”  
  
She nods. “Kitty is here to take David.”  
  
“Then I’ll thank you to let me watch her do so before I consent to accompany you anywhere.”  
  
“That’s fine. Charles—“ She bites at her lower lip, ducking her head down and just barely keeping it high enough to catch his eyes. “You’re my brother. I _love_ you. Not everything has to be a fight.”  
  
No, it doesn’t. It _didn’t_. But if she’s looking for reasons why things have come to seem that way, she need look no further than the mirror.  
  
In the end, she doesn’t push him for a response. She could—her hands jumping to sit contrarily on her hips suggests that she knows that, but she must be on a schedule, or at least a personal guilt trip, because she lets it go and steps back, going to the door and calling for Kitty.  
  
And what a blessing it is to see her. She looks well, all things considered: her dark hair is pulled back away from her face, and she’s wearing a pair of tailored black trousers, paired with a deep purple tunic that’s embroidered about the neck with silver thread, and belted at the waist. The whole ensemble is pretty— _she_ is pretty, and some man will, eventually, be very lucky to have her.   
  
Or not. She may be one of those who brings a knife to bed with her. She did, after all, learn from Charles—who would already have the knife planted and hidden if not for the fact that Erik senses metal. At least, he would like to think he would. He did, after all, fail the first time, and the lingering doubt, induced by Erik’s words—“you gave up killing me awfully easily”—hasn’t faded quite yet.  
  
“Kitty,” he greets her, watching solemnly as she gives him a small smile and goes to collect David. Thankfully, his son is too sleepy to understand much of anything at the moment, and, reluctant to wake, he curls into Kitty’s shoulder: he’s familiar with her, having spent time with her at Westchester when Jean was unavailable, and there’s no reason that he should find her presence jarring enough to wake him fully. “Thank you for watching David.”  
  
Her smile flickers, but, smart girl that she is, she only offers him a small nod before leaving the room. If nothing is said, nothing can be repeated. Clever, clever girl.  
  
Even more intelligently, she doesn’t glance at Raven at all. They know each other, played together as girls, but she spares no look for her. It’s an insult and a precaution all wrapped in one, and it’s clear that Raven knows it: she opens her mouth, on the verge of calling after Kitty, but she stops at the last minute, watching her go with downturned lips and the rapid blinking that she’s only ever done when someone has hurt her feelings. Once, he would have tried to comfort her.  
  
Now, he stays where he is and waits.  
  
“You’ll need to wash up,” Raven tells him once the door to the outer bedroom has closed. “Don’t take long. There are only a few hours to the wedding.”  
  
Ah, yes, but still time enough for him to make good use of the washroom that, as of yet, he’s only frequented in the mornings to splash some water on his face, and, at night, for a perfunctory shower that’s all business: in, clean, out. But this morning he might just indulge in a luxurious hot shower rather than a quick wash up in the sink. If he’s late to his own wedding, well…  
  
They’ll wait.  
  
As it turns out, though, taking his time in the shower is not the treat he’d thought it would be. It feels an awful lot like forestalling the inevitable, and by the third time he’s soaped up his hair—damn it, he can’t keep denying that he’s only making himself more presentable the longer he takes at cleaning. He doesn’t _want_ to be desirable at this juncture. Looking good on his wedding day—he looked good the first time, in a well-cut uniform, courtesy of Westchester’s military.  
  
Will Erik wear his military garb? Almost certainly.  
  
And Charles will dress like a bride, all in white.  
  
Thankfully, the baby does effectively scream _not a virgin_ —though, unfortunately, he _is_ , in the way that’s most relevant to Erik. Untouched. Never penetrated.  
  
Gods damn it. If he’d known it would come to this, there could have been options—someone to fuck him, if only to steal from Erik the pleasure of being his first. No help for it now, obviously, but the thought lingers. What will it be like? Will it hurt?  
  
Slowly, he trails a soapy hand down his stomach—still flat, and how will it look when it’s distended?—sliding through water-slick curls to where his cock is nestled and, bypassing that, he finds what he was looking for: the small slit, just behind his testicles, that has ruined his life.  
  
No one has ever touched him here with anything resembling thoroughness. Moira had never been much for stimulating him that way, and he’d never been comfortable with it anyhow. And sex with a man: that had been a risk he simply couldn’t take—not with the possibility of a bond, or, similarly, with the potential risk of being revealed. Moira is, for that reason, the only person he’s ever taken to his bed: he had to be sure—absolutely sure—that anyone he slept with wouldn’t betray him, and Moira was the only person he trusted enough for that.  
  
Doesn’t matter now. But, then, not much _does_.  
  
Oddly, the slit doesn’t _feel_ offensive—not like something that’s stolen his life, simply by existing. Truth be told, it actually sends pleasure radiating up him when he rubs at it, not dissimilar to the feeling he gets from touching his cock, though milder, more of a slow-building heat.  
  
Pulling his hand back up and away, he leans forward, propping his head against the shower wall. What will it feel like to have Erik fuck him open? He wants it—his body wants it. Gods, he’s getting hard just thinking about it, and—he slams his palm against the wall, spraying water droplets and radiating the wet sound of the smack through the chamber. He’s getting hard. This man has ruined his life, and yet he can’t think about him without lust, without feeling that always-there presence in the back of his mind.   
  
It’s absurd and—he reaches out, twisting the shower to as cold as it will go. The sudden change in temperature sets him spluttering and gasping, but it does the trick, and when he steps back out of the shower, his body has managed to forgo any interest in favor of trying to curl up inside of itself to stay warm.  
  
Pity it doesn’t last long: he regulates back to a more reasonable temperature shortly after he’s toweled off his hair and brushed his teeth, and by the time he’s worked himself up to the point where he’s ready to go back out and face Raven, he’s altogether too human again—emulating a frozen ice cap was infinitely preferable… and not at all practical.  
  
Practical. What _is_ practical at this point? Drying his hair, pulling on a robe, settling himself into the reality that will inevitably be drawn out by marrying Erik?  
  
To feel—the soft terrycloth of the robe over his skin, and the beat of his own heart—it doesn’t make _sense_. He’s strangled by the pull Erik has on him, and that pull, that godsdamned pull, has always been there, even prior to the bond. It wasn’t _always_ biological, and emotional is—damn it, it’s so much worse. In retrospect, he hasn’t had a choice in far longer than he at first realized, and this is really only the culmination of that: a marriage, and a marking, and then knowing his mind is no longer his own, because it will be Erik’s, should Erik choose to make use of it.  
  
It’s only now that he’s pulling open the door and going to meet Raven, to put on his wedding garb, and to learn to live with the twisted mess his life has become—but this began so much earlier. And it didn’t _start_ in tears. It started in talks late into the night, in letting himself fall in love when he hadn’t known what it meant—in thinking that because he’d hidden from nature for so long, nature must have stopped looking for him.  
  
Surprisingly, Raven doesn’t say anything about his lengthy wash-up; she seems to have kept herself busy. While he’s been gone she’s laid his clothes all out on the bed, stark white against the blue of the comforter. One touch would ruin them, if his hands were dirty—the white is bright enough that it’s nearly gleaming. Dirt—any dirt—would stand out boldly: it’s awfully tempting to smear his hands in something and then reach out to grab.  
  
Gods only know how he was deemed pure enough to wear these clothes in the first place.  
  
“They’re very nice,” Raven assures him, ushering him toward the bed.  
  
Thank you, but, no. Not that bed. Not yet. The bed will never be anything other than exactly what it is: he will _not_ allow it to become mundane, not even for the space of time that it takes to dress. Rooted to the spot, he stares over at it, locking his knees and waiting for the situation to play itself out: unlike Erik, Raven can’t simply pick him up and move him—not without morphing into a form that isn’t her own.  
  
“Charles,” she presses, frustration rising in her voice. “I need you to sit.”  
  
“Then I’ll do it at the desk.”  
  
Cherry wood, same as everything else in the room, but solidly made, and—  
  
A scrap of white on the edge of the desk catches his eye. It’s—is that what he thinks—? Yes, of course. Erik would never have thrown them away, and it’s little wonder that he’s thought to keep them in a box, though he must have been reading them recently, if one of them managed to get caught beneath the lid.  
  
The letters.  
  
The letters Erik wrote to Charles after he ran.  
  
If not for the sudden tug of a comb in his hair, he might have made the time to pull them out and look over them again—not that he needs to. After reading them so many times, there’s a fair chance that he can recite them from memory. In his mind’s eye, Erik’s neat scrawl is as clear as when he received the first letter, when his heart had dropped so low that he hadn’t been able to feel—when he’d truly understood for the first time that Erik wasn’t going to allow him to walk away.  
  
So many nights, he’s sat up running his fingers over the sheets of paper, tracing Erik’s words with his fingers and smashing down on the nostalgic tug in his gut. Erik wrote these letters to _him_ , when he could have let Charles be. For whatever reason, Erik found him desirable enough to take this time—and then Charles had always hated himself for those thoughts, and had locked the letters away in his desk, taking to pacing the floors and examining maps, planning how best to repel Erik’s forces.  
  
In the end, it didn’t matter. Even he can only do so much with strategy… and—what if he wasn’t trying his best? Every mistake he made, a self-sabotage. If that’s true—but he’d tried, surely, and he simply hadn’t been able to work a miracle.  
  
He’s worked miracles before.  
  
He could have, if he’d wanted, planned an assassination. No one would be better suited to getting near to Erik without suspicion. Yet, even in the darkest part of the night, when he’d put the letters away and the lights were burning low, he’d never truly considered it.  
  
Not until the end, when Erik took Westchester. And, even then, he’d intended Erik’s death to be at his own hand—no one else’s—his own demise to follow shortly after, also at his own hand.  
  
What if he can’t live without Erik? Is that what it means?  
  
“I can do that myself,” he snaps, reaching back over his head to pry the comb out of Raven’s grip and run it through his hair with rather more violence than necessary. The teeth snag on a snarl at the nape, but one solid tug rips through, and he comes away with a clump of hair on the comb but—why would anyone think he cares? If he ends up with a bald spot, Erik will simply have to learn to like it, or, best case scenario, leave him alone altogether.  
  
“Fine.” Equally as bad-tempered, and he ought to have stopped caring for Raven’s ire by now, but… she’s his sister.  
  
Not that she’s made that mean much.  
  
“You don’t need to stay,” he tells her, though his tone is softer this time—resigned, even to his own ears. “I can dress perfectly fine on my own.”  
  
She hands him the trousers and a pair of clean underwear. Gods, his sister is handing him his underwear. This is ridiculous. Did Erik bother to think this through _at all_? Because he certainly didn’t _ask_.  
  
She snorts. “Actually, you can’t. The back of the shirt needs to be laced up.”  
  
“Turn around while I put on my pants.”  
  
Some dignity ought to be left to him. Very little, obviously, but some: the kind that’s so basic as the right to put on his own undergarments without his sister’s supervision.  
  
Miracle of all miracles, she at least allows that, turning away from him and—a quick glance confirms that she’s facing away, crossing her arms over her chest and—really, how cliché—tapping her foot impatiently as she waits.  
  
Let her wait: just for the satisfaction of it, he takes his time pulling on his pants, followed by his trousers. No surprise to find that they’re rather tight, tailored perfectly to his thighs and backside, showing off everything in rather more detail than he’s ever been used to—not that what he’s been used to really says very much. He likes comfortable. Loose clothes. Not tailored like this, and never out of fine white wool. He’s never understood how some men wear every day what to him feels exposing.  
  
But really, he must get himself together. He’s being foolish. If he can’t handle a pair of fitted trousers, how is he going to handle a wedding?  
  
“Done,” he informs Raven once he has the trousers done up. Before she can offer, he brushes past her and moves to the bed, picking up the belt—white leather—complete with sword and scabbard—also white, with a simple embroidered pattern of white vertical lines running the whole length of it. It’s a small comfort to know that, if everything truly goes south, he can manage some sort of defense, blunted though the sword is. It might be useful for blocking blows, if nothing else.  
  
The shirt is next: this, unlike the trousers, has managed to retain a bit of breathing room. As best as he can tell, it’s some sort of linen, light to the touch, and… billowy. The sleeves, mostly—that is, the sleeves are billowy, not the shirt itself. It lays flat across his shoulders, but the sleeves are pleated—that’s what those little fold-overs are, yes?—leaving them loose and flowing, before they gather back in at a buttoned cuff on the wrists. Honestly, the whole thing seems a bit… casual, reminiscent of a bed shirt, and—  
  
Oh. That’s because it isn’t the top piece.  
  
Certainly not: that honor belongs to the monstrosity that Raven is currently holding up. _This_ , then, is what she meant when she told him she’d need to lace him up.  
  
Goodness, really? There’s probably a technical term for it, when it belongs to a man, but the horror that she’s holding looks an awful lot like a corset. Silk, though, just as he’d requested. Perhaps he ought to have been a bit more specific about the design. More of a shirt and less of a cage would not have been remiss.  
  
He eyes the contraption with distaste—palpable distaste. Something in his mouth is leaving a disagreeable taste, at any rate. “I suppose Erik picked this?”  
  
Raven sighs. “You’ll look very dashing.”  
  
As if she would be satisfied being laced into something that appears as though it would be very difficult to fight in. It would serve Erik right if someone tries an assassination and manages to succeed simply because Charles can’t move in the damn thing.  
  
Snatching it out of her hand—get it over with, don’t think, don’t _think—_ he shrugs into it: the front is seamless, overlaid with a silk brocade pattern: a mass of slightly raised dips and swirls and stems and leaves and—he can’t even begin to care. Let it be what it is. It’s only meant to be taken off at the end of the night. Erik might like running his fingers over the patterns, feeling Charles’ intake of breath, until Erik can press the cloth down, splaying his hand over the widest part and curve it to Charles skin—  
  
No.  
  
He shakes his head and moves on.  
  
The whole thing sits very similarly to a vest: it goes up over his shoulders, wide enough to rest over his collarbones, meeting the seam of the shirt, where the sleeve connects to the shoulder. The neck is a simple V, though a high one that barely dips down beyond his collarbones. Nothing out of the ordinary. The bottom part of it sits just above his hips, low enough that the sword belt must be layered over it.  
  
The back, though—he feels it, as Raven begins to lace him up, all the way up his back, preparing to strangle the life out of him. The laces tie at the base of his spine, though by the time she makes it that far, he’s drawn in his breath, expanding his chest in order to buy himself a bit of room: he’ll exhale when she’s done.  
  
Whether or not she notices, she doesn’t reprimand him for it, and she finishes the knot—thick white silk ribbon for the laces—and pats him gently on the sides. “You do look handsome, you know.”  
  
Her touch burns. Anyone else—it could have been anyone else, but Erik forced _Raven_ into this.  
  
Don’t think. Don’t _think_ about it.  
  
So, instead: handsome. Surely handsome is far too masculine a term. He’s supposed to be the _bride_. Although, the vest—calling it a corset is too much like defeat—does, he has to admit, avoid looking feminine. It is very obvious designed for a man: there’s no real boning to it, but only thick, stiff fabric that locks him in and forces him into good posture.  
  
Perhaps Erik simply wanted to ensure that he kept his back straight while kneeling at the altar.  
  
Not one to be deterred, Raven taps him on the side again. “Here. Boots.”  
  
Not too bad—not compared with the rest. They’re only regular boots, calf high, covering most of his lower leg. If they were in brown or black, they might have been his regular boots, though in better condition. The only oddity is that they’re made out of white leather—but the soles are sturdy, and the make of them doesn’t give him much reason to be insulted. Erik does not appear to be making an attempt to play him off as a woman.  
  
Thank the gods for that. If a woman is what Erik wants, he’ll be rather disappointed when he finally pulls these clothes back off Charles and finds himself presented with what is very clearly not a woman’s body.  
  
The last bit of preparation comes in the form of some magical concoction that Raven dabs across his neck, hiding the bruises from the day before. She doesn’t try to mask her frown when she sees them—they aren’t so bad, not particularly deep, but they’ve colored nicely—and her hands aren’t perfectly steady, but she doesn’t say anything, and, despite the shaking, she’s tender with her touches.  
  
“There. Done.” She sets the concealer aside.  
  
Without waiting for her prompting, he turns is a slow circle, hands held out. “Pleased with what you see?” he asks sourly.  
  
Her expression shutters. “Charles….”  
  
“We should go. Wouldn’t want to be late.” No doubt the wedding will be held in Genosha’s ostentatious throne room. He’s never been there in person, but he’s seen enough pictures of Shaw within it to know that it’s overdone and gaudy. Raven had mentioned the wedding wasn’t for a few hours, and the throne room isn’t far, but—looking at this bed, at the this _room_ , and—  
  
Will Erik at least feed him dinner first? After the wedding, when the crowds have left, and they return here for the evening’s festivities? Will they eat at the table, maybe some wine—will Erik let him get drunk?—before Erik puts him on his back? Surely it won’t be all business. That was never what Erik wanted, and he never gave any other impression, from the time that Charles woke up in that tent, recovering from his injuries, to find Erik at his bedside, aware of what Charles was—what he _is_.  
  
No, Erik will want the romance. He will desire the real sensation of it, as impossible as that might be to obtain any longer, and especially tonight. When Erik touches him, fingers skimming flesh and exploring places Charles has never let any man touch, Erik will want it to be real.  
  
Lovers. Not a conquest.  
  
And that—that authenticity—will simply have to be something that Charles denies him. Of course—of course: he can’t give that to Erik, not when whatever he gives will be taken and jealously guarded.  
  
If they become lovers, then Erik will expect that in the future, while he’s threatening executions and things that Charles can’t stomach.  
  
So: Charles will have to withhold it. There is no other option—and he has no cause to want one.  
  
Why would he _want_ to sleep with his rapist? Can’t rape the willing—but, in a fashion, you _can_ , when the mind says something different than the body, and when Charles’ mouth says _no_ , regardless of what his instincts want. Does that qualify as willing? _When_ was he willing? He did want it, once, and if the circumstances were different, he might still….  
  
But he said no. And Erik isn’t listening.  
  
For now, though, there is Raven: and she isn’t easily dissuaded from her goals. She slips forward, clamping a hand on his arm, not unkindly, but her purpose is easy to see. Well, no, thank you: she lost that right ages ago.  
  
Very pointedly, he takes a step back.  
  
Instantly, she frowns. “I never wanted it to be like this, you know. I—Charles, honestly, I want what’s best for you….”  
  
Hard to believe, when she acted as she did. There were very few possible outcomes, should Erik get a hold of him. She’d known that. She’d killed his wife anyway. She’d helped Erik, abandoned her brother and her nephew, and he—he had thought she’d stand by him, _hoped_ , even when he left her in Genosha while running from Erik—  
  
There’s the possibility that he’s now bordering on hysterical.  
  
That hand is back again, insistent and encroaching, and surprisingly strong for such fine bones. “But you’d rather be one of _them_ than one of _us_ , and I can’t go along with that. I _won’t._ Don’t you see, Charles? Humans won’t ever accept us.”  
  
Too right they won’t—not when mutants act as Raven and Erik do. “ _I_ wouldn’t accept you either, if I were them. You do your best to give them every reason to fear you. Now, let go of me.”  
  
“They _should_ fear us!” Goodness, that’s fanaticism in her eyes. Fever—like when she was young, and she’d gotten sick, badly enough to hallucinate and stare at him with those glazed, yet oddly-sharp eyes. But this is different. This is a _belief_ that’s infecting her. “It took me so long to understand that. We’re the next stage of humanity: what the world is turning into. We’re what is going to allow the human race to survive. Our very existence is driving baseline humans to extinction. We _can’t_ live together—not when the fact that we were born at all means that they’re becoming obsolete.”  
  
That’s disgusting. As though a living creature can be discarded as _obsolete_. These are Erik’s words in her mouth, loud and clear, and as flawed now as they were in those evenings when he and Erik would argue ideology over a drink or a game of chess.  
  
And he’d been so enamored with Erik regardless. More the fool him.  
  
“And so you treat them worse than animals?”  
  
“No…“ But, yes, or she wouldn’t be so slow to draw the word out. “Erik doesn’t want to wipe them out. But he sees that the part of humanity that is the past isn’t the one that should be dictating the future.”  
  
Let them languish and die out on their own, then, beaten down and voiceless, treated to the leftovers of the group that men like Erik regard as their betters. Yes, what a lovely world that will be.  
  
“How odd.” He tilts his head. “It isn’t humans at whose hand I’ve suffered. Humans aren’t forcing me to marry, aren’t taking my kingdom, didn’t _kill my wife_ —”  
  
“You’re a _bearer,_ Charles!” Her voice strains higher, and she flushes. “You never should have ruled at all. From the moment you met Erik, it was obvious: you had a pull to bond right from the start. You’ve always been his, right from the first time you met him.”  
  
Of all the things she’s said, that—that he’s been lost right from the start—may be the only correct statement. Hasn’t he known that all along—that he’s tied to Erik, regardless of whether he accepts it or not? It’s only that he’s chosen to fight it—not that he’s denied it. “You didn’t used to think that. You used to think I was as capable as anyone.”  
  
“You _were_ —you _are!_ ” If she were angry, this would be tolerable, but she’s imbued with an honest earnestness instead, nearly pleading for him to hear her. Perhaps this is another thing for which he can thank Erik: warping his sister into someone so overcome with an ideal that she would murder an innocent woman for it. In her mind, it could very easily have been about protecting her brother, and about love.  
  
He can’t consider it. For the sake of his sanity, he has to look away, both from her and the subject. If she thought she was doing it for him, for his good, when he couldn’t see his own good himself—Moira’s death would, in a sense, be his fault then, wouldn’t it?  
  
And Raven, his beautiful baby sister, is too twisted to be anything recognizable.  
  
Taking his silence for—who knows what she takes it for, actually. Apparently permission to continue on in her line of… does it deserve to be called reasoning when it’s so unreasonable? “The population is dropping,” she pushes on, words spewing out in a rush, “and you have a duty elsewhere. It’s not that you _can’t_ rule—just that you weren’t _meant_ to. Not like you were doing. You’ll rule _with_ Erik. You’ll rule _so much more._ He’ll listen to you, Charles—he absolutely adores you, and if you’d stop fighting with him, he’d listen to your advice. He listens _now_. Think about what you two could accomplish if you worked together.”  
  
Spread his legs and buy some say. She’s right: that’s probably what it will amount to. That doesn’t mean he has to like it.  
  
“What I think, Raven, is that you killed my wife and helped the man who is forcibly marrying me. He’s going to fuck me tonight, did you know? And I’m letting him, because it’s the only way to buy Westchester’s people a pardon. Did you _want_ me to act the position of whore? Was that your goal?”  
  
Nice to know that she has some sisterly feeling left: she pales, shaking her head, one hand raising, reaching out to him—but he doesn’t want it. There’s no fixing this now: he slaps it away.  
  
“You can think about _that_ , when you have your perfect world: about how I didn’t want it, and you helped make it happen anyway.”  
  
Lies, lies, lies—but, still, true, in a sense: as conflicted as his body is, singing for Erik, and hating it, hating Erik and himself and Raven and the idea that he’s wet at the prospect of being touched. He’s never going to be sane again. It’s simply not a possibility.  
  
“No—“  
  
Any control she had left breaks, and she reaches out, wrapping her slender fingers around his upper arm, tugging, trying to pull him to her. She isn’t Erik, though: she can’t manhandle him around at will, and he easily extricates himself, shaking her off and watching those pretty hands fall away, smacking back down against her sides, probably audibly—but the sound is muted by her low cry, just before she tries again, with the same result.  
  
“Don’t you have a wedding to escort me to?”  
  
“Charles—“  
  
“You can’t have it both ways, Raven. Choose a side and stick to it.”  
  
“There _are_ no sides! Not between you and me and Erik. He wants what’s best for you. We _both_ do.”  
  
The laughter burns coming out, but he doesn’t try to pull it back. “He thinks what’s best for me is a baby and a life playing second-fiddle to him and his conqueror’s tendencies.”  
  
“You were _meant_ to have children, Charles. Look at how wonderful you are with David. Don’t you want another baby?”  
  
You’ve had one; don’t you want another? She won’t be the only one who thinks along those lines. Many people will assume that because he _can_ have children, that’s what he wants. And that’s not to say that he _doesn’t_ want more children—only that he shouldn’t be _required_ to have more. It should be a choice; it shouldn’t be a duty.  
  
“Do _you_ want a child?” he tosses back finally, raising his chin to look at her, and—why bother? Why fight with her? This is a pointless, worthless discussion, like waves battering against the cliffs: immovable, and repetitious. He’s only exerting himself, getting nowhere… and it’s made him heartsick.  
  
That really is the crux of it. This hurts. All of it does. He’s exhausted, and Raven’s pointed stare, so honestly frustrated with him, drags that ache out of him and expands it: if he could curl back up in the nest of blankets next to David’s crib, and merely breathe—listen to the sound of his own breathing—then perhaps he could fit the world back into a space where it made sense. Where it is now is nothing more than chaos, utter confusion that plays like the light sometimes does on Erik’s face, striking hard angles and illuminating them quickly enough for a glimpse, and then snatching the vision away and leaving him in the dark with people he knows but cannot understand.  
  
 _Raven_ most definitely doesn’t understand: her lips are pinched, pursed as she always did as a little girl when she was frustrated, confused. “I’m not a bearer.”  
  
“No. Because if he you shifted while pregnant, you’d kill the baby. But if things were just a little different, you would have been. Would you want to live this life?”  
  
She shrugs. “I’m sure I would if that’s what I’d been made for.”  
  
Made for, as though a womb affects his mind. As though all bearers must want children, solely on the basis that they are capable of it. He’s read the old books—it wasn’t like this before the storms. Hundreds of years ago, there was a choice.  
  
Shaw changed that. All for power and the chance to be worshiped.  
  
Some men—they will never see the long game, understand that power doesn’t win happiness. And then there are men like Erik, who don’t seem to understand happiness to begin with, and who are content to settle with the best they think they can get.  
  
“We need to get you downstairs,” Raven says finally, reaching out to the side to grab for the comb again. His hair is still a little wet, but only at the scalp: it will dry within a few minutes, probably sooner given how she’s stepped close and darted her hands up to run the comb through his locks before he can protest.  
  
“You said we had hours.”  
  
“You took an hour in the bath, Charles.”  
  
What? Surely not that long. Though… perhaps. He’d gotten awfully lost in his thoughts, and his skin had been dreadfully pruned when he’d stepped out.  
  
“And we’ll need to get you set up downstairs anyway.”  
  
Yes, the bindings and the blindfold. It’s a wonder that the suicide rate directly before bondings isn’t higher. Probably it’s because the bearers aren’t left alone.  
  
“Fine.”  
  
Not fine. Not at all. But why continue this conversation and indulge in further proof that the baby sister he so loved has become… this? He’ll have to go downstairs eventually: he may as well do so now, without any additional proof of Raven’s views.  
  
That’s not to say that he can’t find reasons why he shouldn’t have delayed a little longer: he hasn’t taken a step out the door of the rooms before he’s surrounded by guards, forming up around him in a barrier of solid, living flesh. Rather like a moving fence, really: ostensibly to protect him, but they’re not particularly trying to hide that they’re also here to ensure that he doesn’t run.  
  
Though, “they” really means “Logan”: _Logan_ isn’t pretending that he and his men are only for outward threats. “Gotta admit,” he says, falling into step beside Charles in the midst the group, taking up the side Raven isn’t on, “it’s kind of a compliment, that Lehnsherr thinks you need this many men to stop you from taking off.”  
  
“Erik has a very realistic view of my determination,” Charles answers dryly, ignoring the glare that Raven tosses his way—or possibly toward Logan. What? Was she hoping that they could play this off as a normal escort, meant to protect? Logan may be wholly irritating, but there’s a certain benefit to the fact that he calls things as he sees them. That’s quite refreshing in a world where everyone is trying to paint a nasty reality into something pleasing and pretty.  
  
Logan snorts. “I’ll just bet. Tried to stab him again lately?”  
  
“ _Logan!_ ” Raven snaps, heightening her glare and taking a few steps to outpace Charles, giving herself an unobstructed view of Logan for the sake of pinning him down directly with that look.  
  
Unfortunately for her, Logan appears to find it funny, enough that he chuckles, grinning with more satisfaction than any cat who got the canary ever could manage.  
  
But… Charles finds himself smiling. As anemic as the expression feels—largely foreign, considering how sparingly he’s had to use it in the last year—he can’t tamp down the satisfaction that spreads warmly throughout him. That was a joke. A joke, made by someone on Erik’s payroll, who doesn’t expect Charles to be happy with this—just expects him to endure it and realize things could be worse.  
  
“I’ve taken the liberty of stocking a knife under my pillow,” he replies. “Saving it for the wedding night.”  
  
As irreverent as that is, Logan lets out a particularly loud laugh, starting deep in his gut and rumbling its way out. “Good for you, Kid. Keep Lehnsherr on his toes.”  
  
Raven blatantly doesn’t think so: her hand darts to Charles’ wrist, squeezing. “ _Logan_ ,” she snarls, though it’s Charles’ wrist whose circulation she’s squeezing to a stop.  
  
“I’m nearly thirty years old, Logan. I’m hardly a child.”  
  
Their little group descends a set of stairs, filling the hallway from wall to wall. If one didn’t know better, they might think this was an invasion of the wedding, rather than an escort to it. Too bad. An invasion would be more fun.  
  
“I’ve lived a damn sight longer than thirty years, Xavier. You’re a kid to _me_.”  
  
Fascinating. Logan has never revealed exactly what his gift is, though the giant metal claws that extend from his fists must have something to do with it. Something else, though—something that allows him to live longer than most. Interesting. “And how long would that be?”  
  
“Long enough that I got tired of counting. Mind your own damn business.”  
  
This time, it’s Charles’ turn to snort: Logan doesn’t sound offended, exactly. More amused, enjoying the chance to tell Charles to keep his interest to himself, same as someone might in a bout of friendly banter.  
  
Probably for Logan this _is_ friendly banter. Strangely, it feels a good deal more agreeable now than it did on the train.  
  
“Gods almighty,” Logan curses after another minute. “At this rate we’re gonna miss the wedding altogether. Hurry it up, boys!” It’s really just too good: Charles can’t help but smirk when the soldiers pick up the pace.  
  
By the time they do reach their destination, Raven appears to have adopted a permanent scowl, directed mostly in Logan’s direction, though occasionally in Charles’ when he takes a little too long to move past Logan—who’s gruffly tossed the door wide and held it back for Charles to brush past. Oh, honestly, again? There’s a sense of distinct consternation when he realizes he’s in another dressing room.  
  
“Huh,” Logan comments, still at the door. “Fancy.”  
  
Yes. All exquisitely upholstered furniture and expensive rugs, more marble in the walls, and framed landscapes hanging for some art aficionado’s eager perusal. Charles regards the entire spectacle with concentrated distaste.  
  
“It’s _supposed_ to be nice,” Raven snaps. “Not all of us were raised in a barn.”  
  
Logan just grins and leans against the door. “Sure, Sweetheart.”  
  
Wherever Logan was raised, he’s coming off better than Raven: luxury in Westchester hasn’t done much to shape her into someone capable of much good. Logan, while he may be a complete tosser, isn’t self-righteous: he calls his own behavior for what it is, sees the flaws in people, and isn’t on a moralistic crusade.  
  
Raven, as much as she may accuse Charles of naivety, is just as much an idealist as he himself is—and for far worse reasons.  
  
“Call if you need anything, Xavier,” Logan says from the door. “We’ll be right outside, making sure no one breaks the door down.” He takes one last glance around the room, wrinkling his nose. “Not sure why anyone’d want to, though.”  
  
Sheer self-preservation—probably of his eardrums—no doubt prompts Logan to duck out of the room and shut the door before Raven can lay into him. Lucky man. Charles—not nearly so much. With Logan’s departure, he’s the sole focus of Raven’s ire, and that won’t be pretty—not the least because he won’t tolerate it.  
  
“I don’t know why Erik puts up with him,” she gripes, already making her way across the room to the table, where—  
  
Ah. Well, he’d known he’d have to see them sometime. Still, it’s with no small degree of disgust that he first lays eyes on the bindings and the blindfold.  
  
“This is an appalling tradition,” he mutters, watching as she scoops them up and turns back to him.  
  
She doesn’t even have the grace to appear sorry. Not one bit. That may be the worst part of all. He’s going to be tied up by his own sister, in order to participate in a marriage he doesn’t want, and she considers it normal—an honor, even.  
  
He hadn’t made Moira do this. She’d been married in a simple wedding dress, eyes open and consenting, hands in front of her, holding his own.  
  
Erik, no doubt, will make him get on his knees. Tradition requires it, yes, but Erik is… he isn’t passive. There is, no doubt, a part of him that enjoys a display of that nature—enjoys knowing Charles is _his_ , at his mercy, in his hands.  
  
“Honestly, Charles, you make it sound as though you don’t understand the symbolism.”  
  
He frowns. “I understand it well enough. But I’m not religious.”  
  
“So I’m aware.” They’d hardly observed the most prominent of holidays in Westchester. They couldn’t ignore them entirely—even he couldn’t buck tradition so thoroughly, especially when the vast majority of the region held to the Religion, but Charles had always participated as little as possible, and he’d spent most of his time trying not to scoff at the blatantly constructed theology. Nothing about it was organic: merely a pastiche of religions that had come before the storms, and which Shaw had reworked, with his own little twists, to his own glory and use.  
  
Honestly, it’s a wonder Erik hasn’t banned all of it just out of hatred of Shaw. But… Erik does know the use of something like this. Religion is a powerful thing. Perhaps he thinks he can take it and mold it to his own use. Who knows? It’s not as though Erik practices the religion of his childhood—that very thing for which he was imprisoned. He’d said once that he couldn’t stomach a religion that had done nothing to save him when he’d needed it most.  
  
It could be that, after what he’s experienced, he’s come to view religion as a tool.  
  
Difficult to say. This may be a conversation they ought to have, potentially once the dust has cleared and the pomp and circumstance have died away.  
  
In other words, not today.  
  
“Ready?” Raven asks, holding out the bindings toward him.  
  
Of all the people Erik could have picked to allow to do this. He can’t—this is _Raven_. His stomach rolls, and he looks away, unable to consider—this is his sister, about to bind him up for what could easily be considered rape, and she’s doing it readily, mind warped into a place that thinks this acceptable. This, truly, is the sum of his failings, that he didn’t manage to avoid this.  
  
“No,” he answers. His tongue is unbearably dry and heavy in his mouth. “No. You can’t be the one to do this. Go get Logan or—or someone I don’t know. But I won’t let _you_ do this.”  
  
Obviously irritated, she plants her hands on her hips, wide white swaths of silk clutched in her right hand. “Honestly, Charles, are you really going to be this difficult—?“  
  
Yes. He is. “Find someone else, or I’ll make a scene. This room isn’t so far away from the throne room: someone might hear if I do. Is that what you want?”  
  
“Fine.” The word snaps out like a lash, and her eyes blaze when she stomps past him—what is she, five?—but she goes, presumably thinking it better to concede and get this over with quickly than to fight him on this. It won’t be the last he hears of it—Erik will be told, and he’ll probably mention it—but the eventual issue that it will make is worth not having to stomach his own sister being the one to do this.  
  
Logan enters the room a second later, wearing—well, that’s surprising. He’s actually rather somber. This time, he’s the one who has the bindings gripped in his hand, and he’s trailed by Raven, who doesn’t appear any happier than when she left.  
  
“Miss me, Kid?” he asks, aching an eyebrow and, without absolutely no preamble, grabbing Charles’ shoulder and spinning him around. “Right. Let’s get this dumbass tradition over with.”  
  
Despite himself, Charles chokes out a laugh. That’s exactly what it is: stupid and useless and just tradition. Something to be handled. Raven would revere it as a ceremony, but Logan—it doesn’t feel so bad when he does it, grabbing Charles’ wrists and crossing them over each other behind his back before winding the white silk around them, over and over, and tying a knot on top. There’s still enough trail to hang down a good foot once the knot has been tied. Some sadist probably deemed it artistic.  
  
As soon as Logan lets go, Charles gives a good tug, just to check, but, yes, the knot holds, and his arms remain bound behind him.  
  
Logan plucks the blindfold out of Raven’s hands. “Huh. Silk. Kind of a waste. If you’re gonna make a blindfold, you might as well make it out of something that could be reused in an interrogation.”  
  
Charles huffs, half laughing. Gods, really? The idea of a dank, dirty cell—though the cells in Westchester were actually quite clean—and some prisoner wearing a white silk blindfold because that’s all Erik had on hand: morbid, but ridiculous enough to spark a little humor.  
  
Or possibly he’s simply half hysterical.  
  
The blindfold itself, though, is not actually silk, which he quickly realizes when Logan reaches up and plops it down over his nose and across his eyes: it’s the same make as his vest, cut from a stiff fabric, which has been molded to the shape of his face. As he saw before it was put on him, it’s overlaid on the outside with the same brocade pattern as the vest. He does have to give credit to whomever made the mask, though: it’s perfectly crafted to fit him, hugging all the curves of his features. Covering just the upper bridge of his nose, it presses in against his eyes, snugly enough that he can’t open them behind the cloth, and then running up over his eyebrows and his cheeks, finally narrowing in over his cheekbones where it tapers off into silk straps. Those curve around behind his head, terminating in a small clasp: once Logan clicks its shut, it presses in against him firmly, tight enough that he wouldn’t be able to nudge it off. Even if his hands were free, it would take some doing if he didn’t undo the clasp—probably he’d have to rip the silk ties to get it off. Gods, those stupid silk ties that extend even beyond the clasp, dangling about halfway down his back: again, for the effect. Useless.  
  
Nothing is funny now. Logan might have made a joke—Charles can hear him talking, saying… something—but the world has gone dark, and—this is why they do this, isn’t it? To narrow his whole world down into the man he’s marrying: to depend utterly on the person leading him. At first it will be Raven, the only provider left in his family, but then she will give him away to Erik—and Charles will be entirely dependent on him, even for something as small as his ability to walk, until Erik chooses to remove the blindfold.  
  
“You hear me, Xavier?” Logan asks, bumping him in the back.  
  
Charles takes a deep breath. “No. Sorry.”  
  
“Asked if you were ready.”  
  
To pitch himself out of the nearest window? Most definitely. For a wedding? No. The window is seeming better and better by the moment.  
  
“I can’t see to walk.” What a stupid statement. Of course he can’t. That’s the point. But… he can’t quite believe it.  
  
“I know, Kid.” Bloody hell, Logan sounds sympathetic, possibly a little sad, deep in his voice, where Charles can’t definitively drag the emotion out for analysis. A man like Logan shouldn’t be so hard to understand, but—but there’s more there, more than just a mercenary following Erik, and—and—  
  
Why does Logan sound like he cares? He shouldn’t care.  
  
“It’d probably be best to get it over with, you know,” Logan tells him, almost quiet. “Know it doesn’t seem like it, but it’ll get worse the longer you think about it.”   
  
It will. He can feel that now, with the darkness and the unknown and how it’s wrapping around him—he swallows hard. If he has time to think, the darkness is going to become too large to handle.  
  
All right, he says, voice dry and cracked and terrible. "Let's go."


	15. Chapter 15

The loss of sight is like nothing Charles has ever experienced—and, though this episode is currently still in progress, there is no doubt in his mind that he will never want to live through anything like this again. Though his arm is looped securely through Raven’s, promising both implicitly and verbally—“I won’t let you hit anything”—that he won’t come to harm, the level of trust required greatly exceeds what he’s capable of mustering. Once, perhaps he could have found a way, but nothing about his world felt stable even before the blindfold went on: there is nothing—absolutely nothing—to convince him now that the very ground won’t fall away beneath his feet, not when it was already eroding before the world went dark.  
  
Breathing has become something of a problem also, wrapped up in the spiraling anxiety that he ought to be able to tamp down on, but which digs its claws into his chest and squeezes. Out of sheer instinct, he stretches out with his foot, searching for anything in front of him, things that will trip him up and send him sprawling.  
  
“Stop sweeping with your foot,” Raven tells him, though it isn’t harsh—rather sympathetic, actually. “I swear I won’t let you hit anything. And you’ll look foolish staggering down the aisle.”  
  
“They haven’t opened the doors yet,” he points out dully. He would have noticed that—heard the noise.  
  
She pats his arm comfortingly. “They’re about to. Are you all right? Your breathing is a little off.”  
  
Damn right it is. What the hell did she think would happen? He can’t _see_. For all he knows, there could be someone inches from his face, waving his or her hands about, mocking him, and he’d never know it. Someone could be approaching with a knife. Any number of things could be in his path, and one slip of his foot would send him sprawling, helpless for any sort of self-defense.  
  
“It’s fine,” he lies, shuffling his feet forward.  
  
And there it goes—the sound of the heavy doors being pulled open, and the tittering noise strangling until it blinks out of existence altogether when the audience goes quiet. How many are there? Erik hadn’t told him who would be in attendance. It sounds like a large number, but that’s not factoring in blindness: he’s likely hearing with additional amplification, the result of his remaining senses overcompensating. What sounds like a thousand may only be fifty.  
  
“It’s going to be fine, Charles,” Raven whispers from next to him. “I love you, okay? I’d never let anything happen to you.”  
  
She doesn’t understand a _thing_ about what it means to be hurt like this.  
  
All this smothering darkness, choking him from all sides, kept from being totally unbearable solely by the touch of his sister, who may be the greatest danger of all, leading him down the aisle like a sacrifice. If she’s there, though—if she’s there, nothing will physically hurt him, at least without warning. That alone keeps him clinging to her arm, swallowing repeatedly against the rolling of his stomach and the sharp pressing in of minds—  
  
Oh, gods. He can _hear_ them. All these people, seated in front of him, and when Raven finally pulls him forward, leading him out into the room, it’s like stepping into a sea of minds. There’s a wall on either side of him, splashing around with thought and feeling and poised to break past its barriers and sweep him up in a rush of thought.  
  
 _He’s being presented as a bearer—has Lehnsherr lost his mind?_  
  
 _\--Ridiculous, mockery of everything we hold dear—_  
  
 _\--doesn’t make sense—_  
  
 _There must be more to this than we’re being told—_  
  
 _\--heard he’s a bearer and Lehnsherr just hasn’t announced it._  
  
 _\--Trussed up like bearer, like Lehnsherr isn’t a godsdamned criminal, breaking his own laws and marrying another man who can’t give him children—_  
  
 _\--if he’s a bearer and ruled Westchester—_  
  
 _\--must be a bearer._  
  
Against all his previous determination, Charles whimpers. It’s soft, but it echoes loudly in the silent chamber: everyone has gone quiet, as respectfully befits the beginning of ceremony. Charles, too, is supposed to be silent. But those thoughts—  
  
The people know. Even if they don’t think they do, they _do_. It’s buzzing in all their minds: the suspicion that he wasn’t what he seemed for all those years. There’s still the contingent that believes Erik has chosen to thumb his nose at his own laws, but most recognize that if that were the case, he would have at least tried to justify his own decisions. The fact that he’s kept quiet, chosen to present Charles as a bearer with no explanation at all—there’s a buzzing cloud of suspicion settling over the room: Charles Xavier is a bearer, and he simply hidden it all these years.  
  
It’s the prevailing suspicion.  
  
Erik kept his word. He told no one anything, but, despite his silence, he’s ensured that the whole world knows anyway.  
  
This is what grief feels like, isn’t it? This crushing, crippling knowledge that no matter what he does, things won’t get better. Before now, there had been a shred of hope: hope that he could take David and escape, find a way to make it back to Westchester and concoct some brilliant plan, free his people, go back to ruling. But not now. Now, even if Westchester managed to shake off Erik’s rule, they wouldn’t accept Charles back: progressive as it is, even Westchester won’t see a bearer sit on its throne.  
  
For the first time, he’s grateful that he’s wearing the mask: it catches the moisture that wells in his eyes, and while he can feel his tears dampening the silk inside the mask, no one will be any the wiser—not until the mask is off, when Erik will no doubt see the watermarks left behind on the inside. But, by then, it won’t matter: there’s little chance that he’ll make it through this entire night without breaking down, and Erik will be there to witness it first hand. Humiliation is unavoidable.  
  
Beside him, Raven doesn’t say anything, but she does squeeze his arm, holding on as she continues guiding him up the aisle with slow, patient steps, accommodating his hesitant shuffling. His gait must appear terribly undignified to the point of coming off as vaguely geriatric, as though he’s stopped trusting his own legs.  
  
Before, he hadn’t thought that he’d want to see the throne room ahead of time. But, if he’d known this whole debacle was going to feel like this, he would have reconsidered: the room could stretch on for miles for all he knows, and—  
  
Oh. How stupid. He should have thought before.  
  
He’s a _telepath_.  
  
Erik will know if he reaches out—in a situation like this, he will no doubt be waiting for Charles to try it—but, in this case, he won’t care. He might even applaud the creativity, especially if he were to feel what Charles is feeling, and know just how terrifying this is. Erik doesn’t _want_ him to suffer. Right? _Right?_  
  
Sliding out of his own mind into someone else’s is the easiest thing in the world. It’s only a matter of latching on to the nearest thoughts, and just… letting go. All his life, his existence has been more a case of having to block out the world around him, rather than actively working to slip his way into other minds. Letting go now is only a matter of dropping his shields and reaching out.  
  
There. A middle-aged woman, one of Erik’s government ministers, not particularly powerful, but notable enough to merit an invite to this wedding. One quick tweak and he can tap in on her eyesight—  
  
The world pulls its direction around, hooking into the back of his brain and jolting him into a place where there’s color and sight and the ability to keep on breathing. Looking at himself will never be easy or comfortable, and he looks ridiculous, shuffling down the aisle with Raven guiding him, but it’s not so very far to the front of the room now.  
  
Erik does look rather handsome, he has to admit. As supposed, he’s dressed in his military garb, and won’t they be a sight, contrasting black and white? The pictures will be dreadfully well-balanced, and probably odd to look at. That is, if it’s traditional to take pictures in a wedding like this. A recollection that mundane is lost under the piles of more important things. Most likely it _is_ traditional, but what’s the point when he’s bound and blindfolded?  
  
Somewhat reassured, he lets his grip on the woman’s mind slip and, drawing back into his own mind, he settles down into the darkness to wait. Only a few more steps to the front of the room, with all those curious and judging eyes, and Erik and the priest. But he’ll have made it: he won’t have to take that walk again for a few minutes, until Erik leads him out.  
  
Finally, Raven pulls him to a halt.  
  
For a moment, there’s silence, punctuated only with the sound of breathing and the unavoidable cough or rustle of clothing.  
  
And then: “In the time of the storms, the gods saw fit to bless us.”  
  
This, then, is the religion that Charles never followed, and that the priest now declares, merely because it’s what is expected. This is what the people believe: this tripe wrapped up in mutant supremacy and fallacy.  
  
The people’s belief has damned Charles, as surely as Erik ever did.  
  
What a realization: those that he tried to save have, in the end, ensnared him. Perhaps it’s good that this ceremony calls for his silence: he’s not certain he could speak past the worryingly large lump in his throat.  
  
“At the end of the world, we were shown a beginning. Out of destruction, mankind was called to change. Though we were nothing, poised on the brink of annihilation, the gods reached down and touched a handful of humanity, bestowing gifts upon them. We have been mightily blessed.”  
  
The priest can speak for himself: blessed hardly seems an appropriate word. Confined would work better, and it might suit Erik’s intentions too, though a quick peek into his intended’s mind would either confirm or deny. Erik may like the idea of Charles bound and helpless, or the heart of the matter may be something else entirely, but—  
  
 _[I can feel your mind working, Charles.]_  
  
So much for subtly. He straightens in his bonds, breathing in and out, in and out. He’ll keep it up, or he’ll die trying. _[Something has to, when I can’t see.]_  
  
 _[I’m sorry for that. It’s an outdated tradition, and I wouldn’t have used it if it could be avoided.]_  
  
Unavoidable. In a sense, yes: with Erik not officially announcing Charles was a bearer, he needed every ounce of bearer symbolism on hand to make his point otherwise clear. Clever of him, all things considered. But cruel. Probably not intentionally—Erik is many things, but his actions in this relationship have never had the edge of _purposeful_ cruelty—but that matters very little when the outcome is the same.  
  
And still the priest goes on: “But the gods, in their unfailing wisdom, knew that these gifts would be insufficient. The storms that had ravaged mankind had left us weak, brittle, and few. And, so, they bestowed on us the greatest gift of all: the gift of life. Though the storms raged, they sent us one to pull back the curtain of the tempest, and, by her example, we embraced the morning light, the first dawn we had seen since the storms began. And with this new beginning, life settled in our bones, taking root, turning what had before been unfertile soil into a new start: some became able to bear, while others were tasked with providing for the new race, caring for those who had sacrificed the ability to care for themselves so that they might ensure the survival of us all.”  
  
What a lovely way to say that those who could now be knocked up suddenly were considered too delicate to fend for themselves. The stereotype of a bearer as a weak, vulnerable little thing, in need of coddling, is indeed a prevalent one. It sets Charles to grinding his teeth, tempted to peak to see if the priest truly believes what he’s saying.  
  
He doesn’t look. Gods forbid that he would look and find something he doesn’t want to know for sure.  
  
“We are gathered here today to witness the binding of one such sacred couple, who the gods have ordained to join together through the blessed art of bonding. What the gods have decreed, let no man deny.”  
  
Dutifully, the crowd responds: “And so the spark of a bond shows the will of the gods.” They intone the words together, save for the slight variation of those who speak a fraction of a second too early or too late.  
  
“And are you the guardian for this bearer?” the priest continues, obviously addressing Erik.  
  
“I am.” Erik sounds solid, confident—put together where Charles is falling apart.  
  
“And do you affirm that the gods have seen fit to bless you with a bond?”  
  
“I do.”  
  
There’s a short pause, in which the sounds of the priest’s robes rustling brushes Charles’ hearing, and he draws in a sharp breath, pulling his face back from the noise. The movement itself is minimal, but it feels disorienting, and if not for Raven’s arm, he might have staggered.  
  
“And do you, the representative of the bearer’s house, consent to give him to this union?”  
  
Raven’s hand twitches—but, no, that’s only her squeezing his bicep. As an attempt at comfort, it fails spectacularly, and in lieu of an easing to the tension in his gut, a numbness is spreading up his legs. Don’t move. Don’t even breathe. Movement means he’s alive and a part of this, and he would very much prefer to lose himself in a spiral of disconnect.  
  
“I do,” Raven answers clearly.  
  
There was never any chance that she would say otherwise, but it’s a betrayal nonetheless.  
  
“And do you affirm that, to the best of your knowledge, a bond has initiated itself between them?”  
  
“I do.”  
  
She couldn’t possibly know. But it’s custom to ask, to make everything aboveboard and legal. Something about this question being meant to prevent false bondings: if the relative consented and affirmed the bond, then it was nearly the same as the bearer giving his own permission, yes?  
  
No. Absolutely not. But, when the law was made, no one ever asked a bearer.  
  
And no one will ask _him_ now either: the bearer does not speak during the ceremony.  
  
At this point, the priest will have turned to look back out over the crowd. The increase in the volume of his voice indicates that he has: “And do you, those gathered to partake in the celebration of this union, bear witness to the promise of these things, that, in their own time, they may contribute to the renewal of our world?”  
  
“We do,” the crowd responds.  
  
The priest may as well outright state that babies are an expectation—that Erik is expected to knock Charles up as soon as possible, “in order to contribute to the renewal of our world.” Hell, that’s only a nice way of saying it: all pomp and circumstance and—  
  
He’s crying again. Mostly silent, of course, but the catch in his breath is there, obvious enough that Raven’s hand tightens over his, her thumb rubbing over his knuckles. Were that it could be a comfort: he would dearly like some.  
  
More important, though, is that he keeps his breathing steady. If he’s too obvious, Erik will notice—  
  
Too late.  
  
 _[Hush, Love, just a few minutes and it’ll be over. I know the ceremony is difficult. I’m sorry. Please don’t—Charles, please, don’t look at it like this. I love you, so much—I do. Please—]_  
  
But Charles cuts him off, slamming up his barriers. Erik can, as he did previously, push through them, but it will hurt, and it will cause a scene. The entire purpose of this ceremony stands on pretense and presentation, so surely Erik will give him this, if only to keep him quiet and quiescent—and, look, he’s stopped the tears. A little dose of anger does wonders.  
  
What would it do if he _were_ to cause a scene? Think on _that_ , if only to stop any further tears. Right, so: if he stood up, interrupted the priest, and stated his refusal, no one here could possibly believe him willing. But… willing or not, ready or not, they wouldn’t help him. It’s so tempting, though, when his eyesight is gone and he’s being bound legally to Erik. Someone should _hear_ his refusal, even if they don’t listen.  
  
It is, of course, not worth it. If he causes a scene, he loses any political capital he still has. Pitch a fit, and people will only slot him that much more easily into the role of hysterical bearer, in need of a guardian’s firm hand and care. If he can walk a line—composed, but not willing, forced but resolute—perhaps later, once this has died down, he may retain a good reputation for level-headedness.  
  
It’s a terrible plan, but—it _is_ the only viable option.  
  
“If, then, all parties are in agreement, the bearer may proceed forward.”  
  
All parties are _not_ in agreement: only those parties that matter in the eyes of the law. Gods, how far he’s fallen. And he yet has further to go.  
  
With a steady hand, Raven guides him forward, tapping his arm and whispering a soft, “Up,” when they reach the steps. He goes, pulling the muscles of his legs into submission through concentrated force of will: nothing else could make him move when his legs are this dead and all he can feel in his chest is a dull ache.  
  
If there were any mercy left for him, the worst would be over. It’s not. It isn’t even close. There will be this next part, the marking, and then the night, a pregnancy, a life lived like—  
  
Like—  
  
Like something he has always dreaded he would become.  
  
When Raven pushes down on his shoulders, he sinks to his knees as is expected, cooperative enough to allow her to position him in what is presumably Erik’s direction. For all he knows, he could be facing the priest. There’s still that niggling temptation to try to reach out in spite of his bound hands, but… it’s less now, buried under a growing apathy born of increasing hopelessness.  
  
And hate.  
  
There is always the hate. He’s a good man, surely—but not good enough. Not good enough to look this situation in the face and keep himself from detesting it and everything that created it. Shaw. People mindless enough to follow his ways. People who know better and do nothing. Erik. Tradition. Himself. Raven. There’s nothing that’s left untouched.  
  
Except David. David is pure, untainted as of yet, though he _will_ be tainted, if Erik has his way. If Erik raises David, he will someday look down on someone as Erik is looking at Charles, and, by that time, David too will be part of the problem.  
  
Better, perhaps, that he had died with his mother.  
  
Warm, heavy hands settle on his cheeks, cradling his face with such obvious care that, despite everything, he can’t believe Erik has ever meant any of this to hurt him.  
  
“It is the bearer’s sacred duty to act as the guardian of life.” How the priest’s voice booms—so very loud against the walls of the room, reverberating everywhere and filling up the space. Nowhere to hide from it: Charles clenches his fists behind his back and tries to breathe. “In their infinite wisdom, the gods recognized that the bearer, in completing his duty, would be struck with great vulnerability: he would need a guardian of his own.”  
  
The first time he’d encountered the actual contents of this ceremony, rather than just hearsay about it, had been in a book. At the time he hadn’t realized, but it was a book common to all households—mandated by Shaw—and which anyone who liked his head attached to his neck had read at some juncture. The contents itself had been beyond him at that point in time—goodness, he couldn’t have been more than five—but, reading the words, he had for first time understood that, just maybe, he didn’t want to be this thing that he was. As he learned later, the book was the common liturgy of the church, and he’d happened upon the words of the binding ceremony—but the how didn’t matter so much as the results: “Why,” he had asked, “does it say both ‘he’ and ‘she’?” The maid who had found him with the book had frowned—he can’t remember her name—and had told him that if it was a woman bearer getting married, the priest used “she” in the liturgy; the opposite if it were a man. “Men bearers can get married too?” he’d asked, wrinkling his nose and peering up at her. “They have to,” she’d said. “All bearers must. They need someone to take care of them.”  
  
And Charles had decided, right on the spot, that he didn’t want to be a bearer very much at all.  
  
When his mother had found out about the conversation, she’d fired the maid, terrified of what she might have realized about Charles. But it never came to anything, and he’d learned after that to be very, very careful about ever discussing that topic.  
  
He had far too much to risk, after all.  
  
“Seeing this,” the priest pushes on, “the gods made way for a bond, that the bearer might find rest and safety in the will of another. It is this divine miracle that we draw together to witness today: the talents of two shall become one. The guardian shall command the gifts bestowed by the gods: what was once individual will be united, overseen by the power of the guardian, for the good of the bearer, and for the continuance of us all. Do you bear witness to this?”  
  
“We do,” the crowd answers.  
  
How can they possibly? They can’t begin to know what it means—they were never anything other than what they are. None of them lived as a different sex, the way he has. He _knows_ what he’s going to miss, and he’s not even the one giving it up: that’s being done _for_ him, by the very people he tried to help.  
  
Let them be conquered, then, if this is what they want. Let Erik rule them, and force them into these laws.  
  
“But with this comes solemn responsibility.”  
  
Ah, yes, the part of the service where Erik promises everything to him. Those warm palms on his cheeks, holding him steady—they’re beginning to shake.  
  
“Do you swear never to use your mate’s gifts, given to him by the gods, for his harm?”  
  
Erik’s fingers twitch, then ease, and his thumbs ghost over Charles’ temples and up into his hair, trying to soothe either Charles or himself. Possibly both.  
  
“I do.”  
  
“And do you promise to care for him, protect him, and provide for his physical and emotional needs to the best of your ability?”  
  
“I do.”  
  
“Will you turn from all others, seeking your pleasure only in him?”  
  
“I will.”  
  
Because as wonderful as it might be for a guardian to father more children, the lack of stability that comes from a fatherless household is not worth it. Bearers and children need a protector—who would ever think otherwise? Maybe… well, Charles had always wanted a father, a better one than Kurt. So it might not be entirely untrue, this idea of needing two parents. But he could raise David alone, separately from Erik, and it would be _better_.  
  
“Will you build him a home; create with him a family; and, through these things, embrace the dawn of the new day with us?”  
  
“I will.”  
  
“And so it is as the gods decreed.”  
  
If they’d been a little more merciful—or _real_ , because surely information that came from Shaw cannot be reliable—they could have decreed that bearers need not kneel: Charles’ knees ache, badly enough that the cramps in his muscles are beginning to extend all the way up into his thighs. He shifts, just the barest amount; Erik’s palms press in, holding him more tightly and stilling him, though his thumbs continue to smooth over Charles’ skin.  
  
“If you would be so good as to help your bearer to rise.”  
  
And Charles _does_ need the help: his legs have long since seized up, and when Erik gets his hands under his elbows—his cheeks feel strangely cold without Erik’s hands—he’s forced to put his weight on Erik, depending mostly on his help in order to stagger upward at all. Worse, he can’t keep his feet properly, swaying with vertigo and blindness and ending up pitching into Erik, where he’s caught against his solid chest and held close. And—Erik is murmuring something into his hair, punctuating it with a kiss to the top of his head, but the words are snatched away in the tittering and cooing of the crowd. Worse than the reaction to a newborn baby: they’ve found the display endearing. A guardian, cradling his bearer to him—better still when it is the king—when the poor, vulnerable creature is too weak to stand on his own.  
  
If he were to look now, he’d be willing to bet there’s hardly a handful of minds left in the room that aren’t convinced he’s a bearer.  
  
Erik has run his game well: never a word uttered, and so keeping his oath, but, in effect, telling everyone just what Charles is.  
  
But the final word has still yet to be said: “Do you, then, Erik Lehnsherr, King, take Charles Xavier, of the House of Westchester, as yours, in bond and in pledge, until the day that death sees fit to pull you apart?”  
  
There is no hesitation. Charles never expected there to be.  
  
“I do.”  
  
“Then in the eyes of the Law and the Church, and with the blessing of the gods, I do declare that man shall have no reason to tear you asunder. For all the days of your lives, you shall be one.”  
  
Lips press down against Charles’ own, and there is an insistent hand under his chin, tipping him up, fingers spreading against his jaw and holding him steady while Erik’s other arm snakes around his back, tucking Charles against him. Charles opens his mouth—there’s nothing else to do, and lets Erik breathe into him, chaste beyond that, though he will undoubtedly be demanding later tonight.  
  
Clapping rings in his ears, mingled with the sound of Erik’s breath when they break apart, Charles swaying and—damn himself, leaning into Erik for support. He can’t see—still can’t see—and it’s worse with the noise, like a thousand laughing jeers from every direction, until he doesn’t know which way to turn. Erik is the only anchor available.  
  
Amidst those cheers, Erik takes Charles’ arm, and, as Raven led him to the altar, Erik leads him down, taking care with the stairs, and always, every step of the way, going at Charles’ pace. He moves faster than he probably should, risking a fall—but Erik will catch him—because the prospect of exiting the room quickly is worth the danger.  
  
By the time they’ve made it out of the throne room and the doors have closed behind them, snuffing out the noise, Charles has reached his last nerve. Never again—if there is ever a ceremony of this magnitude and this humiliation—he cannot. He can’t manage _now_. His breathing—his breathing—  
  
“Hush, Charles….”  
  
Kisses to his brow, Erik’s hands tipping his face up, and that warm body against his own—despite everything, he _is_ comforted. Erik won’t let him choke and drown on the lack of air and the tears threatening. Erik would never let him go so easily.  
  
“Come on, this way.”  
  
He’s guided forward, and there’s the sound of another door opening and closing, and then Erik is settling him down in a chair, careful of his bound arms. He’s probably crouching in front of him, if the way his hands are resting on Charles’ knees is any indication.  
  
“There’s still the reception,” Charles croaks out. His _voice_ —he sounds horrid, as though his throat has been clogged with pieces ripped off from the inside of it. “And the marking.”  
  
“Yes,” Erik murmurs. “But we have a minute. And you need that minute to settle, I think.”  
  
It will take far more than a minute. “I can’t—“ Can’t find it in himself to say what it is he can’t do, apparently. He closes his mouth, lips quivering with the strain of his tension: he waits.  
  
“You have to wear the blindfold until tonight, but… would it help, if I took it off, just for a minute?”  
  
Oh, gods, _yes_. “Please—“ How terribly weak he sounds, but—it must come off. It _has_ to, and if his pride is the cost, he will sacrifice, over and over and over.  
  
A whisper of air to the side of his face, and then the feel of fabric pressed to his jaw—Erik’s chest, pushing against him, as Erik leans over to reach behind him—are the only warnings he gets before Erik’s clever fingers are at work at the clasp at the back of his head. Erik manages to be gentle about it, unhooking the mechanism without pulling any hair, and, finally—thank you, thank you—letting the horrid thing drop from his face.  
  
The first thing he sees is Erik’s expression as it collapses in a fold of pity. “Oh, _Schatz_ , look at you,” he whispers, sounding so genuinely sorry that Charles finds himself blinking back a whole nother bout of tears. At least he can manage to cry quietly—a talent he wasn’t so aware of, having not cried this much since he was a child.  
  
Though Erik has gone back to crouching in front of him, he’s near enough to be able to reach out and swipe his thumb under Charles’ eye, dabbing away the tears. His other hand remains on Charles’ knee, steadying them both—and it _does_ steady, gods only know why. “I’m sorry,” he murmurs, moving to wipe the other eye. “Charles, I _never_ want you to hurt like this, and once this whole mad day is over and it’s just us, I promise it won’t be like this.”  
  
It will probably be worse—because Erik is going to fuck him, whether he wants it or not, and no number of sweet words or good intentions will change that. Saying anything won’t change that either, and he’s not certain he has the strength to try: in fact, he doesn’t—plain and simple—and all that means his mouth stays shut as he watches Erik through a watery view and clumped eyelashes.  
  
The amount of time they sit there must span several minutes. They surely have places to be, but Erik doesn’t say so, and he stays in front of Charles, wiping away his tears each time they well back up, until finally the tears stop coming, and Charles looks away, breath evening out well enough that his mind focuses back in on the situation before him. He _will_ survive this. It won’t be pleasant, and it won’t be easy, but he has no choice, and he can’t sit in this room forever feeling sorry for himself, wallowing in his shock and disbelief and pity. Get it together: he will, because he needs to.  
  
“Better?” Erik asks him eventually, brushing his cheek with the back of his hand.  
  
Charles nods mutely.  
  
“Ready to put the mask back on?”  
  
No amount of determination can make him nod to that, but Erik must know, because he only pushes himself up and ducks down to drop a kiss to Charles’ brow before raising the mask back up and pushing it gently to Charles’ face. It locks at the base of his skull, same as before, and, once again, the world is shut away.  
  
He clenches his fingers, releasing them spasmodically—just once. It will be all right. He can do this. The dark is only an illusion: there is a world beyond, and while Erik’s hand may, at this point, be the only thing to steady him, it won’t always be that way. Erik is not his world, no matter how things may seem now.  
  
For the sake of self-preservation, thinking on how things seem is a topic better left alone.  
  
Physical pain, though: that’s grounding. And his shoulders do ache something awful: there’s not much he can do about it, and leaning into the burn seems the next best thing. If he can’t fight it, he may as well stop caring that it hurts at all. Let his shoulders be torn out of their sockets, while Erik helps him solicitously to his feet, patient and steadying until Charles gains his balance and is ready to move.  
  
“I’m told there’s white wine being served,” Erik comments once they’ve begun their slow progress forward. “I’m flattered that you remembered which drinks I do and don’t like. I assume I’m correct to suppose that you requested that particular order with me in mind?”  
  
An interesting way to twist things, for sure. For a man who sees the worst in everyone, Erik can be remarkably optimistic at times. “Yes,” he admits, but… adding anything after it—any sort of vitriolic comment—is far too much work.  
  
Erik knocks their shoulders together lightly, just as the texture under Charles’ feet changes: they must be moving into a new area. “Do _you_ even like white wine?”  
  
“Not as well as red,” he answers dully. Amazing how thick his tongue can feel in his throat—and, yet, he isn’t choking.  
  
“You knew the reception is being held in the ballroom, right?”  
  
“No.” He hadn’t asked; he doesn’t care.  
  
“The wedding planners didn’t tell you?” He sounds irritated, which—couldn’t he devote some concentrated portion of time to _not_ hinting with his tone that he’s going to commit unspeakable acts of violence? Those planners were horrid—they really were—but Charles doesn’t want them _dead_.  
  
“I’m sure they did,” he reassures Erik, trying to sound alive—why is it this hard? Surely it shouldn’t be. He can’t feel—everything is a bit numb, from his limbs to his thoughts, and he’s only drifting through, half here. “I… admit I wasn’t the most attentive listener.”  
  
Mission accomplished: Erik chuckles lightly and leans in, pressing a kiss to Charles’ temple. “Contrary for contrary’s sake, Charles?”  
  
“I suppose so.”  
  
In retrospect, he should have planned more: done as Logan said and littered this wedding full of minefields. He makes a poor excuse for a master strategist when he can’t even get himself together well enough to sabotage his own wedding.  
  
“The room’s just up ahead.”  
  
Is it his imagination or does Erik sound stilted? All of this conversation has been underwritten with that vague sense that Erik is trying to keep him together, and that—it doesn’t work, will never work. He’s projecting his own feelings, of course. Whatever Erik feels—it isn’t that. Charles is—in all honesty, that line of thought isn’t making sense.  
  
But, sense or not, _Erik_ cannot be the one to keep him together. If Charles can’t do that for himself, then he’s already broken.  
  
“Ready?”  
  
There are other people near them. Their minds buzz pleasantly, though Charles doesn’t dip deeper for thoughts, content to rest in the hum that always exists for him when others are near, regardless of whether or not he’s listening to their minds. “No,” he answers honestly. But, then, it never mattered.  
  
A sigh—and Erik’s fingers on his cheek, turning Charles toward him. “Would you have wanted to marry me if you weren’t a king? If it were only me and you, and the world didn’t matter, would you want me?”  
  
No, no that isn’t _fair_. Erik can’t _ask_ questions like that, not when the answers hurt so much, and his chest aches, and he Just. Can’t. Lie. Anymore.  
  
“Charles?” Erik must be very close now: the air moves with his words. “If you didn’t have other things to think about, and it if it were just you and I in a tent in the middle of nowhere, eating horrible food and complaining about the weather, would you want me then?”  
  
This was never really a choice at all, was it?  
  
No more lying—not right now. “Yes,” he whispers, stomach cramping and seizing painfully.  
  
But what he’s says: it’s the truth.  
  
“All right.” When Erik’s lips press to his, he doesn’t pull away, doesn’t respond—is just nothing, quiet, and how he _aches_. “You can’t see any of them. Why not let it be only you and me, hmm? Just for now?”  
  
His throat is clogged again, and his eyes feel wet. “Because it’s _not_.”  
  
“But it could be.” Erik’s lips move against his cheek, his nose nuzzling Charles’ skin, warm and soft and gentle. Like lovers. “If you’d let it, it _could_ be. Cut off your own senses: don’t let yourself hear the guests, and let me guide you. It will be quiet, and we’ll have a dance, and then you can go back to hearing and thinking.”  
  
Everything about that suggestion is a terrible idea. Letting himself go so wholly, letting Erik guide him more than he already is—but the idea of quiet. What a promise that is, to sink into the darkness and let himself be moved, pretend he isn’t a part of this at all.  
  
 _No, no wrong_ his mind screams.  
  
But… he pulls his senses in, wrapping his mind up in layers and resting back, drifting. There is nothing here, beyond touch, beyond Erik’s hands on him, pulling him along where he doesn’t have to think. There is no consideration of the cheers of the guests or the noise of any announcement—no worry over what his title was when he was announced.  
  
Time passes differently like this. It isn’t quite time at all, not in the real sense. This is syrupy, dragging him along inch by inch: more of a journey down a sluggishly moving river than a passage of time. He has no destination: it’s only about the flow around him, and if he gets himself stuck in an eddy, he could circle for days, none-the-wiser, content to be bereft of the knowledge.  
  
Vaguely, some part of him realizes that when Erik draws him in close, they must have been called for their first dance. Making that matter is so much harder than he would have thought—and doing as Erik says is so much easier: taking comfort in the warmth of a body against his; large, strong hands spanning the small of his back—secure, held just right—under his own bound arms; Erik’s cheek pressed to his, breathing out puffs of breath into his hair; and arms, holding him close and treasured. Round and round, Erik’s hands guiding them, rocking them in a small circle, Charles capable of nothing more when he’s bound up like this. But that’s all that’s expected: just Charles, allowing himself to be guided by his new husband.  
  
Because he and Erik are _married_ now.  
  
“Hmmm,” he mutters, lifting his chin, and, surprising himself, tucking his head onto Erik’s shoulder. A neat little shelf, all his own.  
  
Erik’s hand comes to cup the back of his head; his fingers thread through Charles’ hair, gently flexing, caressing the span of his skull.  
  
 _[Gods in heaven, Charles, I shouldn’t be able to love you this much.]_  
  
He doesn’t answer, merely pressing his cheek more firmly to Erik’s shoulder and leaning in. At this point the dance has become nothing more than the two of them stuck together, Charles wrapped in Erik’s arms, while they rock back and forth slowly. They aren’t managing to turn—and that’s all right. It’s warm like this, right here, where the darkness is a blanket and Erik wants to help keep him warm.  
  
 _[I love you, I love you, I love you.]_  
  
Like a broken record—Erik may not even know that he’s transmitting. Same as Charles: until this moment, he hadn’t realized that he’d blocked everyone _but_ Erik.  
  
 _[Love me too, Charles, please….]_  
  
 _[I do.]_  
  
Two simple words. He couldn’t say them at the altar. But he means it now, for whatever it’s worth.  
  
To Erik, it could be worth everything. The incoherent _lovelovejoyprotectlove_ that radiates through Charles mind pulls at parts of himself that he doesn’t understand. They love each other. Here, just them, it’s all right. It won’t be all right later—not minutes from now—but when it’s only them—and—for now, he’s getting what he wants, not thinking, not being made to think and hurt and—  
  
But if Charles calls the tune, he will have to pay the piper: the longer he gets what he wants and stays like this, tucked away in his own mind and trusting Erik to guide him, the more Erik will want him later, will expect cooperation because, at one point, Charles gave it, if only because it was what was easiest. And it _is_ easiest: he doesn’t have to think, but in letting Erik think for him, there will always be a reckoning.  
  
Later, when he wakes up. But in the dark, in his mind—  
  
Just them, simple: _[Don’t hurt me]_ he whispers into Erik’s mind. His breathing is low and content, pressing his chest to Erik’s with every inhale. Soothing: his very own lullaby.  
  
Before Erik answers, Charles folds back the dark and draws himself out into the world.


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hadn't gone back to this chapter since before I started posting, but, after re-reading it, I found that it was a little more disturbing than I remembered. So, I thought I should probably give fair warning: I'm not exactly sure what to warn for in particular, so I'll just say that Erik has Charles pretty well cornered in this chapter (more so, I'd say, than in upcoming wedding night chapter where Charles will have some room to negotiate), and what he pushes him into doing is invasive (here's the tattooing tag, though I suspect most of you guessed that).

A wedding ceremony is, for a king, just as much about political power as it is about love. His wedding with Moira was not exempt from the clutches of political maneuvering either, no matter how preferable it would have been. As much as Charles had hated it, even he hadn’t found it feasible to overlook the traditional part of the proceedings that called for all the main figures in his court to swear fealty to him and his new wife. In his case, it had only taken about twenty minutes; this ceremony, unfortunately, is taking oppressively longer.  
  
It does make good sense: every regent from every region has sent someone to swear fealty on their behalf, since regents from the Upper North and Westchester—and, no, Charles hasn’t yet asked who is holding Westchester in trust—cannot conceivably leave their posts at this juncture, given the political instability. In addition to that, Erik’s generals have to make an appearance, along with the top Church officials and a host of other people that Charles isn’t trying particularly hard to remember, though the whole lot of them have presumably come to bow before him—he can’t see to know for sure, but that’s what the ceremony calls for—and swear an oath. Essentially, this is about recognizing him as the new consort, but no one is pledging to him so much as they’re acknowledging Erik’s ability to kill them if they don’t accept his choice of consort: it’s difficult to take their words seriously when that’s the reality of it.  
  
There’s a itch of temptation to peer out into their minds and scan, to check whether they really believe him a bearer, but…  
  
But nothing. Scanning those minds is an emotionally crippling prospect, but this isn’t an instance where he’d be betraying innocent people by absorbing their thoughts into his mind: Erik will already know the general pulse of opinion. Refraining from taking a peek is only an act of cowardice—and what a way to make a bad situation worse. Never has courage been more vital than it is now, and looking away would be the height of avoidance.  
  
Do it then. Do what needs to be done.  
  
Sneaking out a tendril of thought, he curls around the nearest mind, then the next, hopping about, and blurring through opinions.  
  
 _[Lehnsherr ought to have thrown him in prison, not_ married _him—]_  
  
 _[—not sure if we’ll know for certain until there’s a child—]_  
  
 _[I’ll fire the first shot myself, I will, if Lehnsherr’s put us all through this for nothing more than a violation of law.]_  
  
 _[—must be a bearer. If not, Lehnsherr has hung himself.]_  
  
 _[Can’t believe I’m swearing fealty to a man who’d let his bearer run amok like this shameful piece of ass has—]_  
  
 _[Xavier’s smart, hiding all those years, I’ll give him that.]_  
  
 _[_ I _wouldn’t let him out of the bedroom. Look at those lips. Can’t blame Lehnsherr, tracking him down like he did.]_  
  
Sheer force of will, combined with the emptiness of his stomach, is the only thing that stops Charles from leaning over and vomiting. _Just a piece of ass_. Exactly as crude as that, sucking out any implication of self-worth—and so it is, in the eyes of the political elite. A good number of these men have visited Westchester on one occasion or another, have talked politics with him, and now he’s nothing more to them than a breeder. Pretty, disobedient, and a major nuisance that’s locked up the gears of their lives.  
  
In response to whatever tell was obvious enough for notice—a flinch, most likely—Erik squeezes Charles’ fingers lightly, skimming his thumb over the back. _[All right?]_ Erik pushes the words toward him with a large dose of affection and a shot of worry.  
  
Fine enough to slam his shields up as high as they’ll go and to tip his chin back, grinding his teeth together, and turning his nose up at any attempted comfort. If that is _fine_ , then, yes. Perfectly fine.  
  
Comfort is depressingly difficult to come by at this point anyway, and the physical mess of his shoulders is rapidly becoming more painful than the sting of rejecting anything emotional that Erik is offering: by the time everyone is finished simpering and promising devotion that they very likely don’t feel, his shoulder muscles are on fire, and his back hurts from being unable to lean into his chair, blocked as he is by his arms. Those swearing fealty are a brood of vipers: not only do they hate him for hiding, but most of them would, if Erik were to be overthrown, fall in with his successor as quickly as they fell in with Erik after he killed Shaw. Yet, here Charles is, required to listen to them despite physical pain and the kind of mental taxation that is far too high a price to pay.  
  
And the whole debacle isn’t over yet.  
  
“Long and pointless, I know,” Erik murmurs to him once the last man has finally gotten back to his feet. “Just the meal now, and then we’ll be done.”  
  
Not soon enough to suit him. Food does sound tempting, though: he’d skipped breakfast this morning, or, rather, hadn’t thought to eat it at all. With so many other things on his mind, it hadn’t been a priority, and he’s paying for it now, dealing with the empty ache that’s taken up residence in his stomach. Until now, it’s only been glasses of wine, of which neither he nor Erik have bothered to drink much at all: Erik because he doesn’t like the variety Charles picked, and Charles because it would require asking Erik to hold the glass to his mouth. Best that he doesn’t drink anyway. Hungry as he is, it would go right to his head. Plus, if he’d had much in his stomach, it would now be painting the floor. What a charming prospect.  
  
Thankfully, as the royal couple, they’re served first. As apparently befits royalty, the meal has several courses—though Charles has never much understood why serving food in stages is particularly noble—starting out with a light soup, to be followed by glazed duck and sautéed vegetables, paired with the finest wine. Dessert will follow: “bread pudding” Erik tells him, which must have been Erik’s contribution to the proceedings.  
  
 _“If you could have anything to eat right now, what would it be?” Erik asks him, one hand curled under his head. Across the tent, Charles can just make out his languid stretch in the dim light. They really ought to get some sleep, but the noise of the rain on the oilcloth is keeping them both awake: that rain is going to make going through the pass tomorrow sheer hell, and though they aren’t mentioning it, they’re both worried._  
  
 _“Bread pudding,” he answers automatically._  
  
 _Erik grunts. “Favorite of yours?”_  
  
 _“Favorite desert.”_  
  
If the wedding planners had gotten their way, there would have been significantly more courses. That’s one decision he’s never going to regret: vetoing that. This on it’s own is plenty. Much longer and his shoulders may fall off altogether.  
  
A tap under his chin startles him, and he flinches. But it’s only Erik. “Open your mouth. The soup’s good, I promise.”  
  
The soup may be good—and, yes, _yes_ it _is_ , warm and flavorful, and just light enough, sure to compliment the flavor of the duck—but being forced to allow himself to be fed like a child far outweighs the benefits. He isn’t allowed long to think on it: Erik is back with another mouthful, which Charles accepts grudgingly, leaning forward when Erik guides him, in order that, should Erik spill, it will hit the table, rather than Charles’ white clothes. How thoughtful. Though, it won’t matter: if he ever gets his way, he’ll shred these clothes.  
  
“Good?”  
  
“Astounding,” he answers dully.  
  
The irritation in his voice ricochets back to Erik, which predictably draws out another in a long line of conciliatory statements: “Not much longer now, I promise. We’ve made it this far: the rest surely won’t do you in.”  
  
“ _I_ have made it this far.” Erik has done nothing but accept praise and revel in the fact that he’s now gotten everything he wanted. He has not been the one to be blindfolded, forced to marry, made to kneel on an altar, and handfed as though he is an incompetent invalid.  
  
Erik’s sense of propriety thankfully extends to the point that this isn’t a debate he’s willing to have while sitting at a head table surrounded by all of his most powerful nobles. But it’s been a very long time since Charles has needed words to know what Erik is thinking, and blindfolded or not, there’s a certain tension in Erik’s fingers when he slides them onto Charles’ thigh to steady himself as he leans in and offers Charles another spoonful of soup.  
  
“Aren’t you going to eat your own?” Charles asks steadily once he’s swallowed. Do not react. Do not acknowledge the hand resting on his leg. It’s not going anywhere—Erik isn’t reaching higher, and for now it’s exactly what it seems: a way for Erik to balance himself.  
  
“You’re more important.”  
  
Touching. And ridiculous. Leaving Erik is not an option, and Erik has already proved quite thoroughly that Charles’ preferences are not a priority—why, then, would Erik ever believe he could be convinced that he is, indeed, important? Important does not equate to being pampered. Important means having a say.  
  
Clearly, Erik’s definitions need work.  
  
Silently, Charles takes another mouthful of soup. It’s a small bowl—presumably because it’s an appetizer, though he can’t see it for himself—and a large spoon; they must be getting down toward the bottom.  
  
“We never discussed what you wanted for a wedding gift, you know.”  
  
Are they really going to bother with that? Erik’s horridly determined to lace this with all the trappings of an actual romance, even down to the smallest details—which would probably explain why he’s so very intent on solicitously spooning more soup into Charles’ mouth. “The only things I want, you’re not willing to give me,” he replies once he’s swallowed.  
  
“If you won’t give me an idea, I’ll have to guess.”  
  
And what a wonder that will no doubt result in. “Don’t bother. I don’t want anything.”  
  
The noncommittal hum that Erik makes is not reassuring.  
  
Nothing about the next few minutes does anything to bolster his spirits, actually: Erik is as attentive as ever, and though Charles is tempted to seal his mouth shut and refuse to take another bite, there would be little point to such an infantile bout of spite when he _is_ hungry—and the food is to die for. The duck practically melts in his mouth, and the bread pudding—Erik shifts uncomfortably in his seat when Charles takes his first bite. It takes him a moment to realize that it’s likely due to the noise he made when he tasted it: half-way to a moan, and edging toward indecent and completely blissed out. Wonderful. He’s arousing Erik at the dinner table. At this rate, they won’t make it to the bedroom, and wouldn’t that be a right mess? In more ways than one, probably. As if everyone doesn’t already know what’s to happen between them, they could see Erik lay him out on a table.  
  
The bread pudding doesn’t seem quite as good after that.  
  
“Done?” Erik asks eventually; Charles jerks when a napkin is raised to his face, wiping fastidiously across his mouth.  
  
He shrugs it—and Erik—away. “How would I know? I can’t see if there’s any left.”  
  
“There’s not. But I can get more for you if you’d like.”  
  
“Thank you, no. I imagine I’ll be plenty fat in nine months: no need to start early.”  
  
The mere thought washes him in dread. Pregnant. It’s something he’d vaguely considered, given his sexual make-up, but always in the abstract—in the “but-I-will-never-have-to-do-this” mode of mindset, convinced as he was that he was going to live masquerading as what he’s always been perceived as being: incapable of bearing children.  
  
“The way you’re going to look—“ However he’s going to look, it’s going to be very agreeable to Erik, apparently: his voice has lightened, caught up with breath and anticipation, and… an undercurrent of something rawer, more primal. It isn’t hard to guess what.  
  
At first, Charles jumps at the hand that smoothes over his stomach, pressing around to the side furthest from Erik, curling there—Erik’s hand is large enough to span a good portion of the side of Charles’ waist—and dragging Charles in a little closer. “Swollen with my child. Something we made, just the two of us together. You, Charles, will look _irresistible._ ” Erik drops a kiss to his cheek, followed by a quick squeeze to his side before he relents—thank the gods—and lets Charles go.  
  
In all fairness, Erik’s thoughts—they aren’t beyond comprehension. Moira had looked incredible while pregnant. As stereotypical as it was, Charles had found pleasure in knowing that the swell of life within Moira had been his doing. But he—how is it possible—he cannot _possibly_ be capable of looking the same. He simply doesn’t have the curves or the softness to appear that way—does he? Or is that how Erik sees him? He isn’t particularly well-defined for a man. He will never have Erik’s hardened muscles, and his face is a bit round—a baby-face, Moira had called it—but surely he is still a picture of masculinity….  
  
“ _Try_ to resist,” he tells Erik dryly with significantly more composure than he feels. Thoughts like those—they aren’t conducive to sanity. “You said we needed to have sex to complete the bond. And there was also the implication that you’re expecting a child. After that, there won’t be any need.”  
  
That sounded better in his head. After verbalizing—it comes out as little better than a whimsical fantasy. Erik has never hidden his attraction. This was never solely about cementing the bond, though it _will_ give Erik full access to his telepathy. That’s important enough that Erik was willing to toe at the line of rape to get what he wanted—hell, he’s still hovering awfully close to that line, if that line even exists in any mind other than Charles’. Rape within a marriage—would anyone but himself and a few select others see that as anything criminal? Probably not.  
  
Erik—some days it’s a wonder that he knows better. Raised in a world like this… but Erik’s mother had raised him for the first years of his life, and she’d taught him an Old World religion that had defined things differently.  
  
Doesn’t that _matter_? Edie Lehnsherr, and Erik had always talked about her like she was someone wonderful. Loving her as much as he had, and still growing up to disregard her teachings, to hate humans when she _was_ one….  
  
That’s what hate and bitterness will do, if they fester long enough.  
  
The fact remains, though: Erik has the base to understand ethics in a different sense from the world Shaw has built. He _did_ have that base, anyway, though the years might have chipped away at his understanding, and by this point he’s as… whitewashed as anyone else. All those ostensibly good ideals that society purports, covering up a rotten core. This life churns out worse men than Erik, though Erik’s philosophy is bad enough to be getting on with. And Erik’s behavior is gutting, in that his attempts at being better _are_ authentic—but, in the end, his kindness is only a dose of sugar to take the edge off the poison.  
  
It’s worse, knowing that Erik probably truly does believe that he’s being quite solicitous with his current behavior—patient, by the standards of society. Most providers wouldn’t put up with nearly as much.  
  
So, better than most everyone else—but still _wrong_.  
  
Thoughts like that simply won’t do, when they’re the most likely to crumple the brain slowly from the inside and leave it oozing in a lump of despair. Gods, will this reception never end?  
  
 _“Charles_ ,” Erik begins slowly, voice low, which—oh, yes, they’re at a table in front of hundreds of guests. Hmm. His timing might have been better: he and Erik can agree on _that_. “That’s not how it works.”  
  
“I was under the impression that things work how we want them to work. Or is society watching the bedroom now as well?”  
  
“No....” The word is drawn out, slow, though not necessarily patient. “But if you think that, once you’re pregnant, that’s the end of it, I think you’ll find you’re being unrealistic.”  
  
Oh? Is he? Hoping that he gets rights to when and how he has to spread his legs? A truly unreasonable notion, for sure. “There would be no point after that.” Only the point he’d wanted to give it, when he’d spent those months living in the same space as Erik. It’s not as though he’s any stranger to desire, but the prospect of not being able to refuse goes far in killing his lust.  
  
“No point.” Flat and disbelieving—but Erik _must_ know what he means. “You cannot be ser—“ He bites off the words, sighing heavily out through his nose. “Now is absolutely _not_ the time to discuss this. And you know better anyway. You aren’t five years old. You understand what sex and attraction are.”  
  
“I also understand what consent is, which is a lesson that you seem to have missed.”  
  
The grip on his thigh tightens, and Erik leans in. It’s hard to blame him: this isn’t exactly a conversation that needs to be readily broadcast. “I would never hurt you. If you think it will hurt, or that you won’t take pleasure from it—“  
  
“I rather think _I_ can decide what I take pleasure from, thank you.”  
  
“You’re being unreasonable.”  
  
“On the contrary. I think I’m being _very_ reasonable. It’s everyone else—you, in particular—who have lost their minds.”  
  
One second, then another, another, and—Erik is quiet, though his breathing is audible over the din of the room. People must be noticing them, but Erik is talented at keeping his expression blank, and a little whispering between the newly married couple is to be expected. No one is likely any the wiser.  
  
Erik finally pulls away, hand and all.  
  
“We’re _married_ , Charles,” he hisses quietly. “Doesn’t that mean _anything_ to you?”  
  
It means a great deal. There’s really no missing that it’s essentially a herald to the bonding and pregnancy about which Erik has been speaking. And there’s the matter of being legally tied to someone for the rest of his life—divorce being an antiquated notion that is almost never practiced nowadays.  
  
“I doubt it means to me what you’re hoping it does.” Love, devotion, commitment? No. Lack of freedom, confusion, and a scarcity of choice? Certainly.  
  
Another pause. This time, it’s broken by the sound of Erik putting his cutlery down onto his plate. “There’s only the business with the trinkets left now,” he tells Charles stiffly. “The room is waiting on us.”  
  
“On _you_. They’re waiting on _you_. I, as ever, am only being pulled along.”  
  
“Are you reminding me or yourself? The frequency with which you bring that up is beginning to lead me to believe that you’re afraid to forget it. Is that it, Charles? Are you afraid that, if you let yourself, you might be happy with me? Do you feel you can’t let that happen, for fear that I’d believe you’ve come to accept what I’ve done? Believe me, I’m well aware you don’t approve, and I won’t think otherwise simply because you stop actively trying to make the situation miserable. No one but yourself would begrudge you finding happiness in a circumstance you can’t find a way out of.”  
  
No, no, no— “Fuck you.”  
  
A sharp intake of breath. And then: “ _Oh_. Charles, really? Is that—is that really what’s bothering you?” Matter of fact, but not meant to be insulting—more as though Erik is realizing it, shocking himself with the implications of being right . But Charles would give just about anything to punch him, to take that realization back. “Letting yourself be happy doesn’t mean that—“  
  
“I thought we weren’t doing this here.” Cutting Erik off is a low blow, but anything that stops this conversation is worth it.  
  
“Don’t try to—“  
  
“If you can’t leave well enough alone, I’ll start talking loudly.”  
  
He half expects Erik to threaten to have a solider brought to the wedding and shot—but he doesn’t. It would be a miracle if he weren’t considering it, but he does appear to possess some modicum of self-control: or it may be that his sympathy for Charles extends to the point where he’s willing to allow this kind of behavior.  
  
Possibly he just doesn’t want to make a scene.  
  
Whatever the answer, that doesn’t mean he sounds pleased about backing down: “If it’s what you want, Charles,” he answers tiredly, “we’ll leave this for now. But for the time being, why don’t we finish up this spectacle?”  
  
Which would mean being able to untie his arms and getting out of the public eye—but it would also mean that they’re one step closer to the evening. Additionally, the marking isn’t presenting as anything to look forward to either. His shoulders truly are agonizing, though, and he can’t stall forever….  
  
“Fine.”  
  
In lieu of answering, Erik merely pushes back his chair and gets to his feet. That’s as good as a shouted missive: instantly, the room goes quiet, with conversations tapering off and dying at an alarming speed. But Erik, being Erik and never willing to set his actions to anyone else’s expectations if he can help it, waits a moment before speaking.  
  
When he finally does, his voice comes out clear and strong—the furthest thing from the harsh whispers that he’d been biting out moments earlier. No matter what Charles might feel personally, he does have to admit that’s passably impressive: Erik is a natural-born leader, inbuilt with all the capabilities of moving speech and a convincing persona when he wants to bother. It only remains to be seen what he’ll be leading people to _do_.  
  
“I would like to thank all of you very much for attending,” he begins, somehow taking such a stock phrase and touching it up with a hint of himself. “And I do invite you to stay and continue to enjoy the festivities; the Lady Raven will be overseeing the proceedings for the rest of the evening.” Raven is still here? Charles sits up a little straighter: he hadn’t known, and he’s passed the day not knowing, and if there’s such a think as retrospective discontent, he’s experiencing it now. She’s been here, all day, watching this, and he hadn’t been aware. There’s something wrong—intrinsically vulnerable—about that. “However, my husband”—he’s Erik’s _husband_ , no going back now, it’s _happened_ —“and I will shortly be taking our leave, which brings us to the last matter that calls for our participation….”  
  
It doesn’t particularly call for _Erik’s_ participation, and, in all fairness, it doesn’t require much of Charles either. Surprisingly, it’s almost a charming tradition: one even Moira had engaged in at their wedding, though she’d only closed her eyes when she went to pick. There had been no blindfold.  
  
It’s an old tradition, this act of the bride sightlessly reaching out and plucking up an item set before him or her. The idea is that, whatever item ends up being selected, it will reveal something about the firstborn child of the couple. A penny for a shrewd financial mind, a rose for flirtatiousness, a chess piece for strategic thinking; a knife for a fighter; a book for an academic; and a tiny baby’s shoe to suggest that, gods forbid—what would he do if his child ended up like him, subject to the same life?—the child will be a bearer.  
  
When choosing, the bride may reach out in any direction—left, right, or center—but whatever the hand lands on, that is what the selection will be. There is no fumbling, feeling the shape of the objects: whatever is touched first is what is chosen.  
  
Moira had picked the book. It remains to be seen if she was right. David is, of course, quite clever, but it’s too early to tell something like that.  
  
“Come on then,” Erik murmurs to him, getting a hand under his elbow and helping him up, steering him around the chairs and off in another direction, presumably the one where a table is laid with the items.  
  
They don’t go far: the table is near them, presumably at the head of the room, where everyone can see. Meaning, regrettably, that every eye in the room is on him, watching as Erik positions him behind the table, hands on Charles’ hips, holding Charles steady while he stands behind him, close enough that their bodies brush.  
  
This part of the ceremony is also meant to serve the function of finally, _finally_ allowing the bearer to be untied. The blindfold stays on until the evening, but, after this, he’ll have his hands back. What a relief that will be: his shoulders must be mere minutes from falling off, or at least grinding the muscles straight off the bone. They burn something awful.  
  
As close as he and Erik are, there’s no way that Erik can have room to see what he’s doing, but his hands feel quick and sure nonetheless, working out the knots in the silk. It can’t be easy: Charles has, despite knowing the futility of it, been pulling against the bindings all day, which will have tightened the knots. But Erik picks at them with quick and dexterous fingers, and fairly quickly there’s a loosening in the fabric: seconds later, the silk slides against his skin, slipping away as Erik pulls it off.  
  
Rolling his shoulders forward: that is _divine._ Better than bread pudding. Better than an orgasm.  
  
Perhaps not the best comparison, considering what’s in store for the evening.  
  
But… so good, and he hadn’t realized how much pain he was in until right this moment, when his muscles stretch and pull loose the cramping that’s made his shoulders unbearably tight all day. Perfect, wonderful—even Erik’s presence at his back, close enough that Charles bumps into him as he rolls his shoulders—even that can’t take away from the consuming, boundless pleasure of simply not being in pain anymore.  
  
“I take it you enjoyed that,” Erik mutters near his ear, sounding pleased. “But, if it’s not too much trouble, perhaps you could make your selection and clear the way for our departure?”  
  
Yes, gladly. No need to be like some brides: worried and puzzling over the selection, debating which way to turn, when, really, it’s all down to luck. It doesn’t truly mean anything. A randomly chosen item is hardly going to predict his child’s future.  
  
That really doesn’t account for his utter relief when his hand lands on the chess piece. Not the shoe. _Not the shoe_.  
  
Breathing out, he tightens his fingers and clutches the chess piece: its shape suggests that it’s the king. If he’s feeling particularly morbid, maybe he’ll leave it on Erik’s pillow at some point, tipped. Same as the board in Westchester.  
  
“Like his bearer, then,” Erik says, pleased, as he brushes Charles’ cheek with his lips. “A little strategist. How lovely.”  
  
Charles ducks his head. “I’d have thought you’d want me to pick the knife.”  
  
Another kiss, right before Erik pulls back, his hands pulling on Charles’ hips, drawing Charles along with him. “Not at all. I may have conquered the regions, Charles, but your mind was the reason it took me so long. If our child is half as cunning as you are, he’ll be a far better ruler than I.”  
  
“Which implies _I_ ought to be a better ruler than _you_.”  
  
“You would be, if you could stomach doing what needs to be done.”  
  
“You wouldn’t know what needs to be done if it walked up and introduced itself to you. I think you just like killing.” Not true—Erik isn’t a sadist. When he killed, it was always mechanical, no emotion either way. But taunting him like this is the only option left, and at this point it’s a matter of working with the available resources.  
  
In this case, it doesn’t work: Erik pats him—honestly, with affection, which is so out of step with the nasty words that it’s infuriating—on his lower back, sliding that hand up seconds later to clasp his shoulder: taking Charles arm, he leads him forward. “Time to go, Darling.”  
  
“Don’t call me that.”  
  
If anyone around them is hearing the things he’s saying, they’re keeping quiet. Erik must be mad to let allow these kinds of remarks where anyone could hear, but he doesn’t bother with a reprimand, and—is he _laughing_?  
  
It’s more akin to chuckling, but, yes, he _is_.  
  
Not only that, but he lets go of Charles’ arm, skating his fingers down to Charles’ wrist and circling it, raising it: when Charles’ palm falls open, palm up, Erik presses a gentle kiss to it, which—he hasn’t raised his arm that high. Erik must be bending, almost bowing, appearing solicitous and doting and—  
  
Charles clenches his hand into a fist.  
  
Again, his temper is ignored. This is becoming infinitely less than satisfying—horrid, when it’s the only means he has of expressing his displeasure.  
  
“The door is right in front of you. Are you pleased to know that most of the court just watched you act like a spoilt child rather than the royalty that you are?” But he doesn’t sound angry—merely tolerant, a little amused.  
  
It’s an insufficient reaction: why isn’t it _anger_? If Erik learns to ride out his irritation, what will be left for him to use to fight back?  
  
A tug on his waist moves him forward, quick enough that he jolts, reaching out and—that’s Erik’s coat, thick fabric, military dress uniform quality, but it’s steadying, good for Charles to curl his fingers into and hold on, purposefully ignoring the solid body just beyond his touch through the fabric. But Erik lets him cling—there was never any question that he would—hand still spread on Charles’ back, guiding him forward and out the door, away from the commotion and tangle of minds in the room behind them.  
  
“You never made Moira get a bonding mark, did you?”  
  
Did Erik just mention _Moira_? Surely not. The day must have run Charles crazy, if he’s dreaming up impossible things. Of all the things Erik wouldn’t bring up….  
  
But there it is. Nothing for it. Nothing but to answer, and maybe to understand.  
  
“Of course not.”  
  
“Of course not.” Repeated tonelessly. “I’d wondered, you know, if maybe she’d gotten one in a place that wasn’t so obvious, obviously in violation of convention, but.... but… no, _of course not_ , as you say. Did you uphold _any_ tradition, Charles?”  
  
“Only those _worth_ upholding.”  
  
“This is one that, personally, I _do_ believe is worth something.”  
  
Oh? Not worth nearly as much as the idea of shoving Erik sideways into the wall and hoping he cracks his skull open.  
  
Erik takes a breath so deep that it drags audibly on its way into his lungs. _Yes, that’s it, darling, do your breathing exercises_. Not a nice thought, but, _See where that gets you._  
  
“I won’t deny that I enjoy the prospect of you bearing a physical mark that will make it impossible for you to hide what you are.”  
  
“Oh? And what’s that?” he snaps, so viciously that it’s a near miracle he doesn’t shred the words on his teeth.  
  
 _“Mine_.”  
  
The expected reply was “bearer” or something similar, but Erik’s answer tips matters over into a space that it would be preferable to avoid. No surprise that they’re barreling right into it instead.  
  
“If you decide to act very foolishly and run, Charles, we both know you won’t get far with a bond mark. And I won’t apologize for liking that assurance.”  
  
Erik draws to a stop, pivoting to face another direction too quickly for Charles to pull up short: he ends up running into Erik, caught up against his chest and in the circle of his arms. If Erik is attempting to play this off as an accident, he isn’t doing an especially good job of it.  
  
“I’m not sure why you think that’s necessary.” So close like this, sucked into the heat of Erik’s body. “We both know that, if a bond takes—“  
  
“It already _has_.”  
  
True. But it isn’t completed yet, and, until it is, he can pretend it isn’t final. “Yes, thank you. As I was saying: if it takes, you’ll always be able to find me.” It’s already nearly reality: it shouldn’t be so hard to say these words. “I wouldn’t try to run: if I were guaranteed my son was safe, it wouldn’t be an escape attempt you’d have to deal with.”  
  
It would be a suicide. And Erik knows it: his hands dig down into Charles’ waist, grinding into the flesh, anchoring against a phantom danger. Only Erik would be so arrogant as to think he could hold Charles back from death itself, solely with his bare hands.  
  
“If you _ever_ try that, Charles—give me one reason—and you’ll never see the outside of the bedroom suite again, do you understand? I’ll take away everything that resembles a weapon. I’ll get you wooden dishware; you’ll have to use a safety razor; you won’t have shoes with laces; and I’ll have the sheets brought in every night before bed, when I’ll be there to make sure you don’t make a noose out of them. Everything, Charles—you’ll lose _everything_. Do you understand me?”  
  
He pinches his lips, half a frown, half a smirk. As unpleasant as this topic is, it’s disturbing Erik, which is enough of a victory to make the discomfort worth it. “Perfectly. But I don’t think you understand _me_.”  
  
Erik’s left hand loosens, slipping down behind Charles and cupping the small of his back, pulling him in a little tighter, right up straight, until their chests brush. “Oh, I think I do. You’d never try anything unless you were absolutely sure David was out of my reach. And once there’s another baby, that one too. But I’m still not sure that’s enough. No, I’m sure it’s _not_.”  
  
And this is suddenly a conversation that is rapidly derailing. Twenty seconds ago, Erik hadn’t had the upper hand. What happened?  
  
Thrown, he tries to take a step back, but Erik holds him close, and when he begins speaking again, Charles can hear the smile in his voice. “If I _ever_ have to deal with another suicide attempt from you, Charles, or if, gods forbid, you actually succeed, I will round up every single one of your soldiers, and I will kill them. I do not mean the one man I threatened yesterday—I mean your _entire_ military force. I will kill them all, and, then, if that’s not enough for me, I’ll raze Westchester to the ground.”  
  
It takes only the space of thirty seconds, and, from that alone, he has lost his last avenue of potential escape. He can’t run from Erik; and now there’s no out, even by his own hand. It would have to be an accident, someone he goads into killing him—  
  
“Do you hear me?” A light shake.  
  
But… he grinds his jaw. Another tactic, another plan—Erik has headed him off on this avenue, but there must be something left that will gain leverage. “If you’re so sure I can’t leave, not even by my own hand, then there’s no need for a mark.” Not the best he can do, surely—there must be something else, something better to toss out, that will cut deeper….  
  
But, this time, it’s Erik who achieves the better finish: “Perhaps not. But, regardless, I want to see my name written on you.”  
  
That’s—he cannot be serious, the arrogant bastard—but he _is_. He’s smiling—Charles can feel the generous curve of his lips against his cheek, where Erik has pressed close—and he knows he’s won, that there’s nothing—  
  
Oh, but there’s always _something_.  
  
It’s a coward’s move, some would say, to strike when his opponent has no warning. But that’s usually an excuse uttered by those who are on the losing end and unprepared. And today, that is Erik.  
  
With immense satisfaction—it feels _fantastic_ —Charles hooks his ankle behind Erik’s foot and sweeps his own foot to the side, wrenching both of Erik’s legs out from under him and driving his hands forward into Erik’s chest. Erik never had a chance: he slams downward, lower half no longer there to support the upper, and—  
  
Damn it, he sunk in a grip before he went: Charles is tied up with him, Erik’s hands hooked around his back, tight enough that Charles is yanked along, tumbling after. If only Erik were wearing an actual crown, together they’d make a nursery rhyme. And a broken crown would be a lovely symbol indeed.  
  
What is not so lovely? Landing hard. Erik catches him, in a fashion, providing something to smash down onto, but the pained noise—sounds like he’s deflating, fast and sharp—that bursts out of Erik works as a prelude to Charles’ bounce—right off Erik’s chest—and then his sharp smack into the ground, rolling once and ending up on his side, listening to Erik swear.  
  
Did Erik break something? It will all be worth it if he broke something….  
  
No such luck, it would seem, and as deceiving as appearances can be, in this case, being blind isn’t helping his perception to clear: he can’t be certain Erik isn’t hurt, but his cursing is tapering off, and he sounds as though he’s rolling over.  
  
Yes, there’s his hand, grabbing. No, he didn’t need that wrist, thank you, Erik, he does have another, so of course feel free to bruise up the first one, you bloody tosser—  
  
“I don’t think I deserved that,” Erik wheezes, tightening his fingers around Charles’ wrist. The fall must have knocked the air out of his lungs.  
  
As much as he’d like to lie here for a little longer, Erik will pull him back upright if he doesn’t get moving, and, if he has to get up, it might as well be of his own volition. “We’ll agree to disagree then, I suppose.” Balancing is more difficult when blind—harder still not to tip back over when he gets his knees under him, spreading his hands on the floor and trying not to sway, but, despite his best efforts, tipping, working to find a wall to brace against while levering himself up.  
  
And there goes Erik, hands slotting just above Charles’ hipbones and holding him steady. As embarrassing as it is, the touch does help to steady, and, as Erik slowly clambers to his feet, Charles rises with him, stumbling, but caught again far before the threat of falling becomes a real possibility.  
  
“Really, Charles, that’s going to leave a mark.” One hand slips off Charles’ hip, probably to rub at the bruises. “That’s an excellent way to break a tailbone, and I know you’re angry, but do you really want me laid up for weeks?”  
  
Apparently he’s forgotten that Charles was ready to put a knife to him when Westchester fell—if, indeed, Erik actually believes he could carry it through. A broken tailbone, though—what a wonderful world that would be: Erik certainly wouldn’t be asking for sex if that were the case. But he can’t very well _say_ that, now can he? Silence is, as is so often the case, the better option, second only to shuffling forward, groping blindly for a wall.  
  
His hand is caught in a gentle grip. And, as if that weren’t enough, a kiss is pressed to the skin of his palm, so honestly tender that the idea of clenching his fingers into a fist doesn’t occur to him until after Erik has pulled back.  
  
“Do you feel better?” Erik asks, laughter hanging in his voice. Already, he’s drawing Charles forward again, probably into the room where they’ll have prepared for the marking. It’s supposed to be quick, from all that he’s heard, but….  
  
He locks his knees.  
  
Everything else they’ve done today can, so far, be erased. A marriage is only a ceremony; the finalization of the bond hasn’t occurred yet. But a mark doesn’t come off: it’s buried under his skin, glaring up through the thin layers covering it, screaming to everyone who sees it that Charles is owned, and that he’ll never be his own man again.  
  
Fuck. A knife, shearing off the skin—he could—  
  
Or it could never happen in the first place.  
  
“Charles.” A warning.  
  
To hell with that. Let Erik pull out his best threat again. That’s the problem with tossing down your best card: once you’ve played it, you have nothing in reserve. He knows the worst of what Erik has, and now it’s a matter of pushing for it in every circumstance, lest Erik forget the nature of what’s between them.  
  
He wants cooperation? He’ll have to face this every damn time: the reality that Charles doesn’t do what he says out of love or goodwill, but because he _has_ to do it.  
  
“Do you _like_ it when I threaten you?”  
  
He tilts his chin back and waits. If Erik grabs him around the neck again, he might be able to add to the ring of bruises—  
  
But that’s not what happens at all. This time, Erik reaches out, driving his shoulder up into Charles’ gut: the world tilts alarmingly, enough to break a sharp gasp out of him, same level of intensity present in his fingers, scrabbling as they are for purchase and finding only Erik’s back and the fabric stretched there.  
  
He’s been tossed over Erik’s shoulder.  
  
Of all the humiliating things—he is not some virgin prize to be carried off. “Let me _down_ —“ Hammering blows down on Erik’s back does no good; he has no leverage. Kicking is out of the question, struck from the list of possible tactics by the curl of Erik’s arm around his legs. It’s fists or nothing from here on out—and it’s looking like nothing, as Erik is completely unmoved by his blows.  
  
When Erik finally does let him down, it’s straight onto some sort of reclined metal chair—padded, thankfully. He has just enough time to suck down a breath, in preparation for a good rant, before his right wrist is flipped over, and a manacle snaps down about halfway up his lower arm—and then again over the palm of his hand. There’s no mistaking what’s left free: the inside of his wrist, right over his pulse point. The left wrist follows immediately after—though, unlike the right, it’s only strapped with one manacle, directly over the wrist.  
  
Looks like he knows which wrist is meant to be—to be—  
  
Thinking it is too much. This is _all_ too much.  
  
“Erik? Erik!” Panicked, frantic—but isn’t that expected? There’s no way to see, and they could stick him with a needle any second and he wouldn’t know it’s coming.  
  
No, that will _not_ happen. He _will_ know, reaches out for it, tugging at Erik’s mind and—it only takes a little push, right out of his own brain and into Erik’s, and he has eyes again.  
  
But what a view.  
  
Gods, he looks _horrible_.  
  
It would have been better if he’d thought about this and the obvious result of using Erik’s eyes: Erik is looking at _him_. And seeing himself strapped down, kicking and squirming, battling against the lined cuffs that don’t even have the decency to leave marks on his arms—it would be better if he were hurt. Like this, with no marks, it might not have happened, and—  
  
His own hands—no, Erik’s—reaching out, framing his face and holding him still: outside of his own body, he can feel himself thrash, like an odd feedback loop where he commits the action and then watches it milliseconds later.  
  
 _[I’m right here, Charles. I’m not leaving.]_  
  
Not seeing is better than being in Erik’s mind, seeing himself, so—out.  
  
But the landing back into his body isn’t soft either, and he jerks, kicking, whining out high and sharp in his throat. The pitch itself is distressing enough—but it must be worse somehow for Erik, who tenses and brushes back the strands of hair closet to his hand, petting and trying to soothe and generally being _infuriating_ , because _he is the one who caused this_ , and he has _no right_ to comfort—  
  
—but it feels good—  
  
Charles whips his head to the side, trying to go for another chunk of flesh.  
  
No luck this time: Erik’s grip clenches in his hair, and all he earns for his efforts is a sore scalp.  
  
“Biting is becoming fair game with you, I see,” Erik comments wryly, and—dear gods, is that a kiss he’s pressing to Charles’ forehead, as though Charles didn’t just try to _bite_ him? “You can start.”  
  
What—? Oh, that wasn’t for him. There’s a noise in the background—metal on metal—and shoes on the floor, approaching, and seconds later, something being set down to Charles’ right. Erik is seated on his other side, his hip digging into Charles’ arm where it’s tied down, captive, as Erik leans over it to give himself better access to Charles’ face.  
  
“Will you feel better if I tell you what to expect? You could watch, you know, in my head, like you were doing a moment ago.”  
  
There was a reason lingering in Erik’s brain didn’t work the first time. Looking at himself is terrifying at the best of times, and intolerable when he’s this helpless. “No. Tell me.” The worst of concessions—asking for help and essentially admitting that this is going to happen. As pathetic as that is, there would have been no denying it for much longer anyway.  
  
At some point his breathing has sped up. When did that happen?  
  
Erik smoothes his fingers over Charles’ brow, and when he does speak, his voice is equally soothing, rippling out over Charles’ mind and colliding with the panic that’s simmering there. It doesn’t do a thing to calm him down—only keeps him from getting worse. He’ll know when it’s coming. He’ll know before they put a needle to his skin.  
  
“They have to clean the skin first,” Erik explains, still stroking, right up by Charles’ hairline, just with the tip of his finger. He’s so slow about it, back and forth, back and forth, over the crown of Charles’ head, right where hair meets scalp. “And then they’ll run a razor over it, just to make certain there’s no hair.”  
  
They: who are _they_? It’s only one person—he can only hear one—which means Erik is trying to be generic. But… who does this for a job? Could it be that this person thinks they’re doing a good service? Some bearers truly do want to get married, and having their spouse’s name tattooed onto them is something of a joy in their minds.  
  
But surely this man can tell that this case isn’t the same?  
  
What then—why—doesn’t anyone care? He could scream and scream in the middle of a crowd, Erik raping him with everyone watching, and no one would do a thing. All those people he’s tried to help, and they would do nothing for him.  
  
His breath is coming in wheezes, and, occasionally, short, sharp chokes.  
  
“Breathe,” Erik murmurs. “He’s going to sterilize the area now. Just some antiseptic.”  
  
It’s only the space of a few breaths, and Erik is proven right: some sort of wet cloth, maybe a towel, is swiped across the inside of Charles’ wrist, followed up by a concentrated patting motion that wipes away any excess liquid. Whatever the liquid is—rubbing alcohol, probably—it dries quickly and leaves the skin feeling rather cold.  
  
Erik’s fingers keep on stroking. “The razor now.”  
  
And so it is: quick and efficient, and there’s very little hair on the wrist, so it’s not surprising that it takes nearly no time at all.  
  
Erik leans down and presses a kiss to Charles’ forehead. “Good, Love, you’re doing well. He’s going to put the pattern on you. It won’t hurt; just relax.”  
  
 _Relax?_ Has Erik gone mad?  
  
The world in general seems to have gone mad, actually. He knew this was coming, though—didn’t he?  
  
Not well enough, obviously.  
  
Why didn’t he think about this more ahead of time? He’s been so concentrated on the wedding night: the marking hadn’t registered compared to that, but, now that it’s here, and now that he’s tied down, it just as bad as anything later tonight is likely to be. At least tonight, he won’t wear the physical scars: this—the marking—will be there for everyone to see.  
  
“Erik—“ It comes out choked, pitiably strangled. “Erik—I can’t do this—please—“  
  
Already begging. Pathetic. If Erik has pulled him down this far in such a short amount of time, how much further can he have left to fall? But he has to try—to do his best to talk his way out of this—when there could be some chance, no matter how slight—and there _must_ be a chance. Erik loves him, and all the influence of the society Shaw has created—Erik’s absorption of that mentality—doesn’t change that. Right? Surely there is some part of him that cares more for Charles’ pain than he does for… whatever is motivating him to do this. If he can access that and pull Erik into the middle of those emotions, there’s always a chance— _has_ to be—  
  
So, again: “ _Erik_.” Plaintive, and as pathetic as he’s ever sounded, but if there’s any chance at all….  
  
He’s broken, and they haven’t even reached the evening yet.  
  
But… but….  
  
 _“Please_ don’t do this to me.”  
  
But there’s still the feel of someone smoothing a papery sheet onto his wrist, wetting it, until it sticks. Erik isn’t stopping it, though his hand has slowed in Charles’ hair, nails catching on individual strands, and it sounds like his breathing has sped up.  
  
Gods, please, this is all he has, and if Erik doesn’t listen, there will be nothing, _nothing_ that he can do to stop this.  
  
“Erik.” His voice breaks this time, and he twitches against Erik’s hand. “Why won’t you answer me?”  
  
Erik’s hand clenches. “Gods damn it,” he swears, and the noise of his voice rakes and flays.  
  
Erik isn’t going to stop this. It’s—all indicators would hint that it’s hurting him to hear Charles in pain—it sounds like it’s killing him—but he isn’t going to stop. No telepathy is necessary to know that: it’s all right there, hanging in Erik’s voice, in those three words.  
  
The paper at his wrist is pulled away, and that’s the last step before whoever is working on him starts up with the actual needle, isn’t it? Last chance, then—but it’s not worth anything. Already, that’s clear. It isn’t fair—isn’t right at all, and what has he done to deserve this? He tried to help the world, and instead it kicked him in the teeth: he’d let himself fall in love with Erik, and this is where it’s gotten him.  
  
Not fair, not fair….  
  
Some sort of gel—or it feels like gel—is smoothed over the place where the paper had been. No one has warmed it, and it chills the skin it touched, though it can’t possibly be as cold as it seems. It’s just _gel_.  
  
“Why are you doing this to me?” he whispers.  
  
Doesn’t love mean something better than this? Was Erik always this man, even back when they were tracking Shaw? Before—back then, Erik had all-but herded him around, bullying him into eating and taking better care of himself, into positions where he’d be in less danger. It was always Erik and an obsession with Charles’ welfare. It was sweet, and it was selfless.  
  
Now it’s Erik who’s _hurting_ him.  
  
What changed?  
  
Did _anything_ change?  
  
Circumstances—but circumstances never can stay the same. And it was _only_ that; it shouldn’t have been enough to eviscerate their core foundations so thoroughly.  
  
“You need to keep breathing,” Erik says from above him, too close—and closer than Charles thought, or so he finds out when Erik’s forehead presses to his, bumping just this side of too hard. Just from tipping his head, Erik can press his lips to Charles’ brow—and he does, over and over, murmuring out words against the skin with a slow dragging heat. Unintelligible words, not necessarily in the sense that they can’t be made out, but only in that they don’t matter, and that Charles can’t sort them into anything he can process.  
  
From the side, something—what kind of instrument does one use for this?—switches on, and a hum starts up, wiggling right down into his bones and shaking his insides. No one has touched him yet. But that’s coming.  
  
One more try, then: “I can’t do this.” Can’t handle this. Am about to panic.  
  
“I’m sorry.” Erik sounds it too. That’s—gods, _why_ does he sound like that? “If I didn’t think this would be better for you, in the long run….”  
  
“How—“ His voice breaks, and he has to swallow down the shards of the words and start again: “How is this _better_?”  
  
“Charles.” Said so much like a benediction—and he could live his whole life never hearing it said like that again. “If you can’t accept what you are, this— _life_ —will always be hell for you.”  
  
What he is. Oh, yes. A bearer. Or Erik’s. Erik could mean either. He could mean both.  
  
“No. _No.”_  
  
“If you can’t run anymore, you’ll have to face it, and maybe then you can finally stop pretending to be what you’re not. You can settle into what you were meant to be, and you’ll see that you were wrong to hide all along. But, first, you _have to stop running._ ”  
  
If he has to wake up every morning and see a mark on his arm, then he’ll have to face what he is, and what Erik wants him to be. Is that it? That’s true enough, but the results of it—they won’t be what Erik wants. Resignation isn’t acceptance—it’s bitterness. And then when he’s pregnant, when there’s another baby, and he sees proof of himself and Erik combined, every day—won’t that be enough? Why does he need a mark too?  
  
“Deep breath now, Darling.”  
  
Erik need not describe what’s about to happen: hearsay is an excellent teacher, and on that alone he’d told Moira, that, no, she wouldn’t have to do this. But Erik, with gentle hands and a stalwart will, thinks he knows what things should be like. What’s best. Only ever what is best for _Charles,_ for dear, lovely, vulnerable Charles, yes? And now, what’s best for him, wrapped up in a world of pain when the needle finally touches down on his arm, and a sharp whine wrenches out of his throat. He clenches his teeth, biting down on his grief and his hate, but it isn’t enough, and he’s spitting both out seconds later, pushing them out of his own mind and into Erik’s.  
  
If he’d physically strangled Erik, he probably wouldn’t have drawn out the noise that follows, like they’re _both_ being killed.  
  
And surely he must be dying. This _hurts_. He’d known it would, but it’s like fire across his wrist, licking up the skin and turning him to ash. Once the fire dies down, the soot will spell Erik’s name.  
  
Erik’s name—and, right below it, Erik’s signature—written on his wrist. Signature—hurts, hurts so _much—_ because it’s unique to Erik, and then the name in print so others can read it. All bearers endure this—endure, yes, just keep on living and breathing through it. He can—will. Everyone like him has his or her guardian’s name—if they can do it, he can too, bloody _hell_ —signature written into the skin of the wrist.  
  
Damn Shaw to hell, and curse the day he was ever born. Anyone who could think up something like this deserves the worst that the world has to offer.  
  
“Hurts,” he grits out, but Erik only cups his face, shushing him, trying to soothe, trailing the curve of the mask with his thumbs.  
  
By the time it’s done, he can’t possibly say how long it’s been. It could have been hours; it could have been minutes. Time has warped around and pressed back down on him, and he’s gotten lost in the hurt of it—no, but, really, there was that book he read once, about the man living backwards in time, and it feels like that—more the betrayal than the physical pain, but some of that too.  
  
When the humming finally stops, and the needle is put away, and his wound is being dressed—what is he supposed to do now? Everything is—if it were different, if that were all it is, he could cope. But it’s the same: it’s only gotten _worse_ —doesn’t make much sense, but, then, nothing does—when he can’t catch his breath and force himself into pretending his wrist doesn’t ache. There. Done. Now it’s irreversible.  
  
Thank the gods he’s blindfolded. At least he doesn’t have to look at the thing on his wrist. Not _yet_.  
  
“You did so well,” Erik murmurs, kissing down the bridge of his noise—and, why do Erik’s lips feel wet? “And… I’m sorry. It’ll be better now, I promise. It will—I’ll make it so, Darling. Gods, I’m sorry—sorry it had to hurt.” Sorry enough that Erik’s lips are wet and taste like salt.  
  
But… not nearly sorry enough; Charles turns his head away and breathes out a shaky sigh. Sorry is so easy to say in the aftermath, but Erik would never have had to apologize at all if he’d listened. Apologies don’t mean much in the face of that fact.  
  
As he leans back into the padding of the chair he’s on, fingers work at his wrist, meticulously bandaging the wound and wrapping it. Because that’s what a mark is: an open wound. If he doesn’t care for it, it could become infected. Best that it’s cared for now, kept from causing him further pain—because, apparently, pain _after_ the fact just isn’t acceptable.  
  
Once Charles’ wrist is bandaged, the noises from the man who created the mark indicate that he’s putting his things away: metal clinking, the rustle of trash bags, and more shoes squeaking on the floor. Somehow, whoever he is, he no longer seems to matter. He’s only a man, doing what the world has taught him. The slide of metal over Charles’ skin, as the restraints fall away, is far more interesting. He’s been cleaned up and bandaged, and now Erik is permitted to take him home—not that anyone _permits_ Erik anything. He makes his own rules, and, as he’s just shown, he doesn’t listen.  
  
Even downright begging won’t do a thing if Erik is truly set on an action.  
  
“Are you ready to get up?” Erik asks, voice having bounced back into something stronger—less penitential and more sure of himself.  
  
 _Is_ he ready to get up? He doesn’t feel like it. But… the idea of staying in this chair for even one moment more is abhorrent.  
  
“Yes.” It won’t be the first lie he’s told Erik today.  
  
Erik could at least _try_ to pretend that he’s convinced. “Of course you are,” he deadpans, but he’s at least willing to allow the lie to function: his hands curl around Charles’ upper arms, tugging him upward, and—finding that he’s stumbling isn’t surprising, per se, but he didn’t particularly _want_ to have to lean on Erik.  
“All right?”  
  
He wrinkles his nose, and, because there’s no other option, leans into Erik. “Brilliant,” he answers, rolling out the word as thickly as he can.  
  
“I don’t think I’ve ever heard someone use that word as much as you do.”  
  
Ah, a distraction. Erik is offering a meaningless distraction, trying to quibble over words. And--fuck, he can't think, and--if he does--if he considers the agony on his wrist, and the reality of what's just happened... Erik's words are innocuous, and they offer a place to hide.  
  
One step, then another, and it’s not so hard when looking at the matter in such small increments. But making it to the door might be a challenge. “You’re well aware that my accent is considered fashionable, and Mother was nothing if not up on the trends.”  
  
“Fashionable in _Westchester_.”  
  
Fashionable, same as getting a bonding mark, though certainly not favorable—nor is being distracted by talk of an accent that he’s had since he and Erik met. It’s hardly news _now_. “Are you already finding yourself embarrassed by me? Ashamed of your husband who hails from a kingdom too far away to spend much time in the more trending courts of Genosha?”  
  
“Only ashamed that the court here doesn’t realize they ought to be more like you.”  
  
How charming. It’s a miracle that Erik doesn’t have men and women alike casting themselves down at his feet. Though, the propensity for mass killing must be somewhat off-putting.  
  
Not that it was sufficient to keep _him_ away from Erik.  
  
 _That_ is certainly something he’d prefer not to examine too closely.  
  
“Stairs now,” Erik warns, lifting up under Charles’ elbow. He’s careful—it’s worth conceding that—always ensuring that he gives warning. Some weddings—beyond the fact that they never should have taken place, they’re a right debacle, with the bearer tripping and falling because the provider couldn’t be bothered to have a little care.  
  
Not that it would be remiss for Erik to have a little _less_ care. Really, he needn’t hold open the bedroom door—which he does, when they finally arrive—and if he’d like to vacate the room altogether, that would be lovely.  
  
No such luck: Charles is left standing, unanchored, while Erik lets him go briefly to close the door, devoid of powers for whatever reason—probably to savor the finality of feeling it shut—before he comes back and collects him, guiding him further into their rooms, and then into the bedroom—  
  
This is going to happen.  
  
 _This is going to happen._


	17. Chapter 17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so not the sex quite yet. That'll be next chapter.

“Do you have wine?”  
  
Erik pauses him, eyeing him with mingled pity and firmness. “You’re not getting drunk for this.”  
  
 _This is going to happen._  
  
Charles wheezes out through his nose. Wine would help. Wine would calm him down. So, to hell with that order—he’ll drink if he wants to. And it’s becoming increasingly possible that he _does_ want to. Following that line of thinking, he’d also very much like that mask off, which is acceptable now that they’re in private, so, frankly, the only question is: why is it still on? All that constriction against his skin has become intolerable very, very quickly, starting the moment it touched his face and worsening throughout the day. So, _why is it still there?_  
  
It’s probably still on for the same reason that he’s now physically prevented from taking it off: Erik, who catches his hands, fingers manacling him around his upper forearms where the bandage isn’t. “Let me.”  
  
Nice to know that he’s a despot right down to the details. Very thorough, his husband.  
  
Bloody hell. His _husband._  
  
As a child, he’d thought about what his spouse would be like. After the incident with the maid and the talk of bearers, he’d always assumed that his spouse would be female, since marrying a man would have meant publically admitting what he truly was. Once puberty hit, he’d indulged a few mental fantasies of touching men, but they’d faded quickly in the face of pragmatism, and pretty soon he’d been left imagining small waists under his hands and supple breasts. If he’d strayed from that, it had been to thoughts of male bearers—guardians and steriles were a risk without the payoff of marriage—though there had always seemed to be an intrinsic dishonesty about that: seeing himself in the person under him was a rather effective mood killer. So, female bearers it had been.  
  
It wasn’t so difficult, really. It’s all a matter of perspective, with gender so varied these days. With guardians, bearers, and steriles, a person’s preference for male or female means very little. And guardians—what he was _supposed_ to be—had the pick of everything. Guardians are, naturally, always male, and it wasn’t as though anyone would have thought him less of a guardian or a man for liking men. In fact, no one would have cared if he’d fucked his way through half the sterile men in Westchester—or the sterile females, for that matter. And when it came time for bonding, what did it matter, if his mate was male or female, so long as they could bear him children?  
  
Human or mutant, though… He resists the urge to scowl. How very _angry_ people had been when he’d married a human. Sure, if he hadn’t been king, it would have been acceptable—breed the mutant gene and all—but gods forbid that a human have a place of prominence.  
  
Bloody stupid, that. Bloody stupid, _all_ of it. The designations are ridiculous, when most of the male bearers alive today could just as easily father children. But, no, bearing is more important, more precious, grounds for coddling: in the eyes of society, the capability to bear children overrides any capability to father them. One tiny fertility test at birth determines a person’s entire social status, directly from the cradle.  
  
Well, _two_ tiny tests. It took them some time, but scientists have found a way to detect the mutant gene at birth as well. A mutant guardian? They’re marked by the State for leadership roles almost from birth. Human guardians are similar, though their influence is limited to the human sector. Again, _stupid._ The designations don’t make _sense_. For all the propaganda about guardians being the ultimate protectors, even a sterile mutant may take precedent over a human guardian. Still, what he would give to be even a sterile human. Anything other than a bearer.  
  
Male or female bearer, it doesn’t matter. Bearers are society’s darlings, revered and slandered at the same time. Endowed with the honor of saving their species, they’re precious: with birth rates so low, it is of utmost importance that a bearer be treated well. Protect them, lest they come to harm and the world loses yet another precious resource necessary for the perpetuation of life. But, in the dark corners of a bar, or in the forefront of people’s minds where they expect no one to hear, there are a thousand slurs lurking, growing out of a sense of entitlement brought on from hundreds of years of patronizing bearers, of seeing them as weaker, as a group who owes the guardians their sexuality in return for the care they’ve received.  
  
This mess of designations had always mattered—had always colored every aspect of his life—but it hadn’t been until the campaign to find Shaw that it had become completely impossible to maintain his preferences.  
  
Any chance he’d had of keeping his eye solely on bearers had ended that day when Erik had shown up on Westchester’s doorstep, seeking a private audience with the king to, as it turned out—though Erik had wisely never said so in public—discuss the increasing threat that Shaw had become. _He’s a danger_ Erik had told him, standing in front of the fireplace of Charles’ sitting room. _He needs to be stopped._  
  
As true as that had been, all Charles had been able to think in that moment—just one fleeting, rebellious thought that he’d quashed down as quickly as it had come—was _It would worth being a bearer, just to have this man._  
  
Erik never knew about that thought—nor will he ever. But the thought is back now, haunting him, when Erik slips around behind him, reaching for the clasp on Charles’ blindfold. _You wanted this_ his mind reminds him, _even if it was only for a second, you wanted this._ Receiving what he wanted is a fitting punishment: he probably deserves this. That’s a hard prospect to face, though, in the midst of tipping his head back, mouth hanging open as he feels the cloth around his face loosen and fall, brushing down the bridge of his nose and over his mouth, past his chin and thumping, free, against his chest before Erik reaches around and pulls the mask away.  
  
He doesn’t open his eyes.  
  
“Charles?”  
  
He got himself into this through a combination of bad decisions and a dearth of self-control. He should have turned Erik away that day in Westchester, told him that he’d send aid, but that he wouldn’t personally come. He’s damned himself for looking twice, and if he opens his eyes and sees Erik dressed in a well-cut uniform, he may, despite how much he hates all of today, look a third time.  
  
Boots on the floor, a brush of contact at Charles’ hip—but it’s only Erik circling back around to stand before him. The ties of the mask slip loosely against his shoulders, slithering down and away, collected by Erik when he pulls the mask from Charles and, from the sounds of it, sets it aside on some handy surface.  
  
“You have the most beautiful eyes, Charles—why in the world would you keep them closed?”  
  
Because Erik is the culmination of all temptation and also the worst thing for him, that’s why. Because he’s in love with a man he hates—should hate, maybe hates, _I don’t know—_ and because, as soon as he opens his eyes, his life will begin to truly be over.  
  
The tip of one finger traces curiously over the pocket under Charles’ right eye, smudging the skin out of place. Anyone else, and it would be panic-inducing, having a touch so close to his eye, where one slip of that finger could blind him. But this is _Erik_ , who won’t physically hurt him, and the touch does soothe the tired, burning sensation that’s been eating at his eyes all afternoon, probably brought on by the tears, though possibly also by exhaustion.  
  
“Let’s get out of here,” Erik whispers, dropping his hand to Charles’ shoulder and bringing his other up to match. He tugs, insistent but not cruel, and going with him is easiest, in the same vein as the whole day has been: blind, and dependent on Erik’s lead.  
  
It’s not the same when Erik drops away from him—the barest hint of panic forms, quick, but snuffed out just as quickly by the return of Erik’s hands, this time to his hips, drawing him forward—  
  
Wait. Stop.  
  
Dependent. Dependent on Erik’s lead? Gods, what is he doing, what is he _letting_ Erik do?  
  
The realization pulls a trigger, and all of a sudden he’s jerking away, stumbling backwards. Because—Erik—Erik had him _marked._ Had him marked like _cattle_ , and now he expects the night to move on as if nothing untoward has happened. Little touches and back to normal, disregarding what’s just happened.  
  
Fuck, though—what—is there anything that can make the point, this _point—nothing_ is capable of drawing Erik’s attention and forcing him to listen.  
  
“You—“ He chokes, gasping, and staggers backward several more steps. The needle, and that hurt—same as when Frost had gone into his mind and Erik held him open, held him down, both times. And there’s nothing to do to stop it, Erik wants to move on with no recognition that any of it happened, and what the hell else is there to do but drift along with that?  
  
“Charles?”  
  
Don’t say his name—Erik shouldn’t be allowed to say his name, when he’s done—with what he’s _done_. Erik—where is the Erik that was his friend? That Erik—was he the same all along? Marking people and tearing open their minds, and—  
  
The wall smacks into his back, and it isn’t until he feels that solidness behind him that he realizes he’s backpeddled so far. The room is spinning, tipping, and his knees won’t stabilize him, and his lungs won’t haul in the breath required to explain why that’s so. Nothing’s holding up, and he sinks down the wall, catching his shirt on the woodwork, and crumpling down into a crouch.  
  
“You hurt me.”  
  
“What? Charles—“ Squatting down, he peers over toward Charles, wrinkling his brow and raising his hand—  
  
Charles flinches back; Erik drops his arm, turning both hands palm up, watching Charles with the same sort of concerned wariness that he’d apply to a wounded, confused animal.  
  
Fuck. A confused animal: that’s exactly what society thinks, and what Erik is doing to ease that—it’s precisely how Erik has been _told_ to handle these incidents.  
  
“How can you _possibly_ think what you’ve just done is acceptable?”  
  
Circling his hand over the bandage on his wrist is by no means a good course of action, but his fingers are stuck to the gauze before he thinks much more about it. Touching it hurts, but it’s a living pain, sharp and real, and too potent to let him forget. Forgetting what Erik has done is terrifyingly easy when faced with affection. All that hurt, and then the affection, and the affection is too enticing, smoothing balm-like over his nerves. But if he can keep the pain up, can keep it real, Erik can’t soothe him.  
  
“Darling, come away from the wall, and we’ll talk.”  
  
“But you won’t _listen_.”  
  
Erik frowns. “I might not agree, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t hear you.”  
  
What a convenient excuse. “I don’t—“  
  
But Erik isn’t willing to wait: one quick lunge, and he locks his hands around Charles’ arms, dragging him up and forward, away from the wall. If falling into a standing position is possible, then they’re doing it, lurching upright and tumbling backward in a mess of feet that mimics dance, but which is sufficient to carry them across the floor, off toward whatever destination Erik has in mind.  
  
The world tips abruptly, tripping him downward: he drops, stumbling and pitching forward, but caught, lowered with great care, against warm skin and a solid body that has always felt comfortingly large when compared with his own smaller frame. And that’s the crux of the problem, isn’t it? Wanting Erik doesn’t stop when the want is mingled with grief and fear. How many times has he seen this in someone else’s life? It’s isn’t even always bearers: unhealthy relationships, where no matter how bad things get, there’s no separation, because hate isn’t possible to sustain indefinitely, and proximity is the greatest grindstone of all, wearing down a person’s reserve and smothering him with reminders of the good.  
  
Dropping down into a circle of arms, Charles eyes flicker open, though it’s a bit on the wrong side of pointless: his face is pressed into Erik’s shoulder, slung as he is over Erik’s lap with his legs dangling off Erik’s right side and his bottom seated half on Erik’s lap and half in the space between Erik’s hip and the chair’s side. The entirety of his upper half is gathered in Erik’s arms, braced securely by the arm around his back and Erik’s chest against his right shoulder.  
  
As constricting as it is, it’s containing in the same way as having his back securely protected.  
  
Eventually, though, necessity draws him out—though Erik doesn’t push—and he drags his head back away from Erik’s shoulder and looks up, nearly knocking himself against Erik’s chin: but, when he does look, he’s met by blankly relaxed features, and it becomes very clear that, whatever else Erik might be feeling, he’s cultivated a patience sufficient to wait out Charles’ jitters. Or it intends to _try_ —there isn’t any hurry, or so say Erik’s smoothed brow and the fortitude in his gaze, the way he trails fingers down the back of Charles’ neck and merely stares at him, waiting for Charles to make the next move.  
  
Fine, then. He’ll abide by Erik’s wishes in _this_.  
  
“What the hell happened to your conscience?” he whispers, slamming his eyes closed again. Those memories won’t stop battering, with the sound of the marking machinery and—and Frost’s voice, marking his mind for Erik. “You wrote your name in my _skin_ , and you don’t seem to understand why that is— _fuck_ —“ Once, articulation was his gift. Reasoning with Erik, though—it all falls apart, and what were once good arguments are left in shambles at his feet, dampened with emotions.  
  
“Do you think you’re the only one who’s ever had that done?”  
  
Does it _matter_? Institutionalized brutality is _worse_ than an isolated case.  
  
Erik raises his hand, cupping Charles’ face and pressing his thumb to the front of his chin, nudging into the dip there. “I knew it would hurt, and I know you didn’t want to do it. But it wasn’t done on a whim, Charles. After you ran—when I was left alone in Genosha, making plans to get you back, don’t you think I sought out other bearers, asked for advice?”  
  
No, actually, that hadn’t been a consideration. Erik never mentioned… “You never said.”  
  
Nodding, Erik presses his thumb a bit higher, catching his nail just on the underside of the lip. “There are plenty of bearers at court. I talked to them, about what it was like.”  
  
Court bearers. There’s a reason why the Genoshan court is no place to be unless you have a death wish: either political rivalry will kill you, or the utter vapid nature of the bearers will do so instead. Genosha was the epicenter of Shaw’s control: most of those bearers have been trained from birth to be seen and not heard, and to revel in the control exerted by their guardian. They’re hardly better than pretty dolls, dressed flawlessly, pampered, spending their days raising their children and worrying over diets and the best ways to keep in shape, despite the fact that people in many of the other regions are starving.  
  
“And how many of _Westchester’s_ bearers did you consult?”  
  
Erik sighs. “My point, Charles, is that the problems you have with bonding—for the bearers I talked to, they’ve become pleasures.” His softly exhaled breath stirs the hair in front of his mouth: Charles shakes his head, trying to displace the strands. “More than one of them told me the mark was a comfort to them—was protection from others, and proof that they were wanted.”  
  
“But that’s not _me_. Is that what you want me to become? A pretty bearer from Genosha? Do you want me to be brainless, lacking opinion, and interested in nothing more than the latest fashions?”  
  
“No. I’ve _told_ you: I want you to help me _rule_. You don’t need to be like _those_ bearers in order accept what nature made you. I don’t _want_ you to be like them, but I do want you to see that certain aspects of the customs aren’t so terrible. Some of them are actually in line with what biology has made you to do. You can rule with me, can make decisions, but you were always meant to have a mate to look after you. It’s not an either/or deal. Belonging to someone isn’t a bad thing, Charles. I will—” He leans in, nuzzling, nudging the skin of Charles’ cheek out of place with the side of his nose as he drags it along up toward the cheekbone. “I’ll always take care of you, always give you a home. I’ll love you. In a few years, it will feel more natural to accept that, and something like your mark won’t seem so horrible.”  
  
In a few years. Years, in which this wheel keeps on turning, and everything he’s experiencing now continues to be recycled. In years, Erik might prove himself correct, if only because trying to keep up a fight that long means either madness or concession.  
  
Already, he’s cracking. “Anything I say, you’re going to sweep it under the rug and claim it’s because I’m refusing what I am. Any misgivings I have, you’ll argue that, in a few years, they’ll disappear. But I’m miserable. This is _miserable_.”  
  
“It doesn’t have to be. Let me—“ Erik dips in closer, brushing his lips at the corner of  Charles’ ear and stroking fingers along his hip. “I want to take care of you. Let me do that. Let me show you how good this—“ A soft kiss to the inside of his neck, “can be.”  
  
It’s impossible to fight a war when one’s own body is fighting for the opposing team. But reason, though, that and conviction—it can lay low and bide its time. Avoiding everything else is rapidly becoming out of the question. But a physical response isn’t a complete surrender—nor should it be taken as such, though Erik will, to some degree, ultimately believe it to be exactly that. And, if he isn’t listening to words, than showing all the cards is really no danger at all—and it will be all the better at the end. Anyway, it’s a promise: having those words out there, stated—it’s harder to go back on something you’ve said, rather than on something you’ve only thought.  
  
“I’m going to take you down,” he murmurs, turning his head and sending the words, soft and sweet, directly against Erik’s ear. “Regardless of how long it takes. I won’t stop fighting you.”  
  
Erik’s fingers squeeze against his hip. “I suppose we’ll see.”  
  
Dismissal doesn’t taste quite so bad when it’s done like this. How many men in the past have underestimated their bed partners? Erik is not the first, will not be the last, and that he’s fooled without any substantial manipulation—for godsake, Erik has had the warning tossed in his face, and he’s dismissed it.  
  
Fine, then. By doing so, Erik has turned it into a hope that can be clutched tight and treasured. Curl it up within, and settle back into Erik’s arms, because this can’t be avoided. It’s horrible, and its leaking into Charles’ mind and pulling him down, turning his body pliant and pathetic, but it isn’t _all_ he is. This isn’t forever. This can be survived. Fight, and fight, and fight—and this _can be survived_.  
  
So, survive, then: what did he once hope for if he’d slept with Erik? In those times when he’d let himself think about it—he can draw from those thoughts, turn this into something biological. If his body wants it, then take exactly what his body wants and live through this that way.  
  
And what had he had thought: touching—those slightly calloused fingers, that are now stroking his neck, soft and slow, while Erik watches him with affection and a large dose of amusement, as though his challenges are humorous. Damn him to hell. But Erik isn’t pushing, and that’s something to be thankful for—and… he’s letting Charles feel him out, bring his own hand up to splay on Erik’s stomach, pressing tentatively. Gods, Erik is built well, which—it isn’t news, exactly, but he’s never had the chance to touch Erik like this before. Everything up until this point has been forced or frantic, and… at least it’s easier like this, when Erik lets him set the pace to start, giving him a short time to ease into this and just explore and breathe and—he can do this. He _has_ to do this.  
  
Because it’s going to happen. Later, he’ll probably damn himself for being complicit and not going to this kicking and screaming, but there’s always time for that after, and, perhaps, if he can get a hold on the situation, he can shape it to his liking—or at least to his toleration.  
  
It’s always a possibility.  
  
And, later….  
  
Best concentrate on the here and now.  
  
And, at the moment? Things could be worse. Though, that may be a backwards bit of logic, simply to see how bad they _are_ , exactly. His own mind is hard to know at this point. But… Erik is handsome, and kind, at least to him, when he isn’t being cruel—there’s no point in exploring that dichotomy—and if it weren’t for the hurt and the hate, he’d be happily in love with Erik. Surely that’s better than most other people in forced marriages.  
  
Slowly, he presses his fingers down more firmly, watching the fabric of Erik’s dress coat sink in under his touch, until he hits the solidness of Erik’s abdomen. Erik leeks vitality like this, so _alive,_ very real and warm and unmovable, like the protection he’s supposed to be, if it were necessary. And of course Erik would protect him if it came to that point. That’s never been a question.  
  
The military jacket under his hand is of a very fine make—wool, if he had to guess. Erik _would_ prioritize that, after the time they got stuck in that rainstorm, and Erik had been wearing cotton: wool, he’d quickly realized, keeps heat in even when wet, which cotton does not.  
  
“What are you thinking?” Erik whispers against his temple, but he doesn’t move, seemingly content to allow Charles’ hand to pick over the front of his jacket, skimming buttons and digging his nails into the silver embroidery. There’s a stitch loose near the third button. For shame: Erik ought to have his dress uniform in perfect condition.  
  
That question requires an answer, doesn’t it? That would explain why Erik’s legs shift, jostling Charles’ weight. “I’m thinking you ought to keep your formal dress in better order. There’s a thread loose.” He plucks at the fabric.  
  
“I’ll have it fixed before I wear it again.” He busses his lips against Charles’ hair, but when he ought to move away, he stays put, face half lost in Charles’ locks.  
  
General military standards say it ought to be fixed, but first it might be best to check and make sure nothing else is lose, and that does provide a rather handy excuse to trace his fingers up the line of embroidery around the buttons, stalling at Erik’s neck, where the fabric turns to flesh.  
  
If he can’t touch his husband like this, how is he ever going to survive tonight? But… his fingers are stuck, teetering half off the collar of Erik’s jacket, nearly to his skin, but not quite there.  
  
And Erik only waits, motionless, with his face in Charles’ hair, as Charles works to push himself just those few centimeters further, until….  
  
There. Warm skin and, a little higher, a happily dancing pulse that’s playing to a higher tempo than it ought: clearly, Erik is not so unaffected as he is pretending.  
  
“You have stubble,” Charles murmurs, catching his nails in the beginnings of it and trailing along, concentrating on the pull against his fingers. There isn’t much, but it’s rough, and it will undoubtedly feel odd against whatever part of him Erik tries to kiss—  
  
No. Too soon. Not—that is not a thought he can handle yet.  
  
“I was up very early this morning.”  
  
How strange to physically feel Erik’s words vibrating against his fingers. “You shouldn’t have bothered.”  
  
Never will there be a point when he can play his part _too_ well, it would seem: trying to accept that this must happen would dictate that he doesn’t antagonize, but he hadn’t felt it on his tongue before it had been there, blunt, between them. Regretting it doesn’t really seem right, either. It’s a valid statement, same as—“If I were to tell you ‘no,’ right now, would you threaten to kill my soldiers?”  
  
So much for diplomacy.  
  
By some small miracle—flying in the face of the subject matter—his fingers are still trailing over Erik’s neck, scratching at the stubble and the softer skin further down. So, maybe his words won’t be taken with too much anger.  
  
Erik answers quickly, muffled by Charles’ hair, but clear enough to tell that there’s absolutely no hesitation: “No. Never for something like this. I understand why you’re scared. I wouldn’t. Not under these circumstances.”  
  
Scared? Like some blushing virgin? He is _not_. “I’m not _scared_. I’m angry. I offered you this night in order to keep my people safe, and instead that bargain has come to extend far beyond just tonight.”  
  
“I said I’d shoot your soldiers: your non-militant citizens are quite safe, as promised,” Erik murmurs, dragging the words out and curving the edges of the last few, almost as though it was said with a smile. For the first time since he’s pulled Charles into the chair with him, he moves his own hand, twining his fingers into the laces at Charles’ back. “Would you like this off?”  
  
The damned corset? He’d like it _burned_. Rather like Erik’s divisions of Westchester’s ranks. There was no specification, only assumption. But that is very like Erik: he doesn’t lie, but when bargaining with him, terms must be clear, since Erik is clever enough to play with any slack he’s given.  
  
No point in pushing that now—not when Erik is offering what he wants.  
  
Rather than arguing, a better answer is to drop his hand and scoot forward, off Erik’s lap until he tips forward onto his feet, followed so closely by Erik that Charles hardly has to take his own weight at all, framed as he is from behind. “Yes, then,” Erik says, still in that pleased rumble of an indulgent verbal smile. “You do look devastatingly handsome wearing it, you know.”  
  
Oh, certainly, if one enjoys resembling a trussed-up lamb for the slaughter. “I think you enjoy it more than I do.”  
  
Not difficult, when he doesn’t enjoy it at _all._  
  
A tug at his waist—Erik’s already undoing the laces, with that initial shock of breathlessness that pulls Charles in tight as Erik pulls the laces, working to get the leverage to untie them. But they loosen quickly after that, and the air he was holding in whistles out in a rush, same as the laces whistle, snicking through their holes and tearing free.  
  
“I have no doubt that I enjoy it more than you do, Charles.”  
  
If he could do this himself, he might feel somewhat better. As it is, he doesn’t have a choice beyond standing here quietly while Erik unties him from this horrible, restrictive contraption. Some women wear these everyday, simply for the sake of a tiny waist—expect, oh, how silly of him: that was a _vest_ he was wearing, and it hadn’t been meant to change his shape—wasn’t that what he’d been told?  
  
Blessedly soon, the cursed thing dips down, the straps sliding off his shoulders: he shakes it all the way loose, pulling the strings entirely out of their holes in the back. Good—it’ll take a substantial amount of time to get it back together again, and while it will never take long _enough_ , it’s some assurance that Erik won’t be able to put him back in it tonight.  
  
Though, the wedding night was never really about putting clothes _on_ , now was it?  
  
“Better?” Erik asks from behind him, watching—Charles can feel his stare—as Charles stretches, popping his shoulder joints. He’ll be feeling the results of those bindings for _days_ , damn it, and, up until now, that foolish piece of clothing he just shed had kept him too restricted to take much pleasure in having his arms free.  
  
“Both that and the bindings were barely a step below a torture device,” he snaps, stepping forward to head across the room toward the liquor cabinet.  
  
No such luck: he’s caught by the waist before he can take more than a few good steps, and, without so much as a by-your-leave, Erik pulls him back again, same as before, down into his lap on the chair. Though, this time, he’s seated fully astride, legs on either side of Erik’s thighs, his back to Erik’s chest with Erik’s arms wrapped securely around his waist. What a lovely, affectionate cage Erik makes.  
  
“Hello.” Spoken low and sensuous against his neck—a little wet too, where Erik’s breath is damp and warm, curling against him and making promises Erik will be only too eager to keep. Gods, though, when he sounds like that—there’s gooseflesh on Charles’ arm, and he squirms, arching his head back to slot in against Erik’s shoulder, just so he can roll his head a little, get a look at Erik’s face. It ought to tell him _something._  
  
He really needn’t have bothered: there’s no information there that he couldn’t have gathered from Erik’s voice. That sheer want, and the satisfaction that’s pumping along with his blood—they both tickle at Charles’ skin, irritating worse than the complacent grin Erik’s drawn up. It doesn’t last long—it’s smudged out of existence when Erik leans in to place a kiss on Charles’ cheek.  
  
Already, his breath has gone tight, chest locking up; he’ll never make it through the night like this. Erik needs to stop. A minute would be enough. But he needs that minute. _Please._ “Erik—“  
  
But he can’t get out more than that. If Erik pushes now, he can’t—his mouth won’t work, not when there’s no air in his lungs. He’ll be pushed down, voiceless, held down, lost—and it’s terrifying, that thought, worthy of warping the room around him, which it does, into a mess of colors and his own startled gasps for breath.  
  
Time creaks to a halt… but Erik _does_ stop.  
  
What a way to start the evening. He’s hushed, and Erik begins rocking him again, same as that first time in the hallway. It’s textbook: how to gentle an unsettled bond mate. Repetitive motion, contact, patience—Erik is doing all of it, and it _does_ work, simply because it means a reprieve, and a space of time to think things out.  
  
And—is Erik humming? He is. Or… somewhat. Those may actually be words, but they’re too soft and garbled to make out, and he’s not speaking in any language Charles knows. It’s beautiful, though, rather sad, but captivating, so easy to get lost in the melancholy tune of Erik’s tone and the surprisingly capable song of his voice.  
  
Interrupting is a shame, but, at some point his breathing has slowed, and… he’s curious. “What is that?”  
  
Erik doesn’t answer him right away, but that’s all right: he keeps on with his song, a little more softly than before, now that he knows Charles is actively listening, but it keeps sending soothing vibrations up his chest and into Charles’ back, and the words, even unknown as they are, sound like a blessing and a lullaby all at once. He could gladly fall asleep to this, and to the weight of Erik at his back. Maybe they could just do this? That would be all right. This is… almost comfortable, actually. Nearly pleasant.  
  
When the song ends, Erik brushes a light kiss to the back of Charles’ neck: “A song my mother used to sing to me when I was upset. I only found out years later that it’s actually a Hebrew love song.”  
  
Hebrew. Interesting.  
  
How ironic that the song brought comfort: Hebrew is a language that has been banned for over two hundred years now, but which has lived on in sects like that of Erik’s childhood. That song was part of the reason Erik spent his childhood in a prison camp. _And_ it was used to comfort him, same as he’s trying it now with Charles.  
  
“I like it,” he admits.  
  
“Do you? Then I’ll sing it often.”  
  
“You… have a pleasant voice. I… think I like it—when you sing, I mean.” Could he sound more stilted? Probably not.  
  
“Whenever you want, then.”  
  
 _Now_ would be nice. Just keep doing that, and they won’t have to move to anything else. Having Erik hold him would be acceptable, and they could talk about this.  
  
Oddly, Erik _does_ seem to want to talk: “Tell me what will make this easier for you.”  
  
So much for stalling the inevitable. The desire to reply with a nasty remark is almost overwhelming, but, if he were to do that, he’d lose the opportunity to gain concessions that honestly might make this easier. “I—“ _don’t know_. Where there should be an answer, there’s just… nothing.  
  
Erik hums agreeably. “Can you tell me how you like to be touched?”  
  
Touched?  
  
Gods, no. Only, he rather does have to, doesn’t he? If he doesn’t, Erik is going to find out for himself. But that doesn’t make an answer _easy_ , or really even particularly possible. If he truly doesn’t know—how could Erik ever expect otherwise? “I’ve never slept with a man,” he barely manages to say, and the shame that rises in his cheeks, heating his face, is awful. Damn his fair skin that holds a flush so well. “I’ve already told you that.”  
  
“I know.” The bastard sounds pleased, and he squeezes Charles’ waist lightly—is that meant to be reassurance? “But what do you _like_? Not _everything_ is different, you know. Places where you’re sensitive, ways you liked to be touched—those don’t change, regardless of what gender your partner is.”  
  
“Pardon me for saying so,” he snaps, “but Moira never put any part of herself up inside me. It _isn’t_ the same.” That had always been something they’d tried their best not to talk about. He’d gotten the sense that she’d been a bit uncomfortable with the fact that he’d had another opening and, in effect, the same parts that she had. She’d never said, and it had never affected their sex life, but he’d certainly never asked for nor received stimulation in that manner.  
  
And now Erik expects him to talk about what he _likes?_  
  
“Have you ever fingered yourself?”  
  
He can’t be serious. That’s just—that’s just _embarrassing._ “None of your—“  
  
“That’s a ‘yes,’ then.” It’s said wryly, with obvious amusement. “What do you like?”  
  
It isn’t that _easy_.  
  
“I—bloody hell, Erik, I don’t _know_!”  
  
Any attempts to jerk away are pulled up short, and he doesn’t try all that hard. Talking about his fantasies was never something he wanted to do, but running now wouldn’t make it better.  
  
“I’m sure you know a little more than you’re letting on. How about this: tell me someplace on your body that’s sensitive.”  
  
“My _cock_.”  
  
“I think I took that as a given.” Same as he’s taking it as a source of amusement now. How lucky for him that he’s in the position to derive humor from this. Less lucky that the patience he’d displayed earlier is still in full force: he’s languidly holding Charles put, his chin propped on Charles’ shoulder, riding out every snappish comment thrown his way, and practically engulfing Charles with his embrace. “I can’t make this better for you if you won’t help me.”  
  
This far into the proceedings, it’s worthless to point out that he doesn’t want this—Erik already knows—which inescapably means he’d do better just to answer Erik’s questions and try to ignore the heat of skin on skin when their cheeks bump together. “I would like for you to be gentle,” he chokes out finally—and how terribly sour those words do taste.  
  
But, yes, gentle would be good: no lingering hurt—or as little as possible—means he’ll be able to bolt out of the bed when it’s all over.  
  
Erik nods, nudging Charles’ head. “Of course. We’ll go slowly, and at any point that you find you’re in pain, you tell me, and we’ll pause until the hurt passes.”  
  
But only a pause. Not _I will stop_ , because Erik will not. This will happen tonight, and all the care in the world isn’t going to change that. “I like to be kissed.”  
  
That earns him a more enthusiastic response: Erik hugs his waist again, nodding pleasantly. “Wonderful. That’s good, Charles.”  
  
Nice to know that he has Erik’s approval. But, honestly, though, it would be nice to have Erik kiss him throughout. A kiss works as a distraction. With Moira, it was a connection, something that felt in some ways more intimate than actual penetrative sex. A kiss was more personal—not about reproduction, but just about them. He—if he has to do this with Erik, it would be nice to feel that he’s more than just a convenient incubator. He’s going to be laid bare enough—he needn’t lose his humanity too, but if he _can_ lose his other thoughts and sink into that kiss at the expense of everything else, he won’t say no to that.  
  
 _I like to be tied down_.  
  
Once, that might have been on the list. But not with Erik—he’s lost enough power already. He’d never asked Moira, either. It had no appeal when he was the dominant partner. But those fantasies he’d had of Erik, sometimes, he’d thought…  
  
But it won’t happen now, and he’s not mental enough to mention that it was ever a possibility.  
  
“I’d prefer you do it from behind.”  
  
Silence.  
  
So, no, then.  
  
“I can’t agree to that one, I’m afraid,” Erik begins slowly. “I want to see your face: I need to be sure I’m not hurting you, to see if you like what I’m doing—and I don’t want this to be impersonal, Charles.”  
  
It never could be. It’s only that watching Erik’s face is too much and too raw—not that he has a choice. Same as the arms against his waist, on top of which he’s resting his own arms. Erik’s tactics are meant to keep him where he is and prevent him from checking out and turning this into a series of motions with nothing behind them. Erik isn’t after a marriage in name only.  
  
Though, if someone thought that, they need only check Charles’ wrist, which, incidentally, is sore. The damn thing is smarting under his bandage, and, if it weren’t for what he might find, he might be tempted to peel it back and have a look at the wound. Not the best idea, but he _is_ curious.  
  
And more than a little appalled.  
  
Most things do seem to run that way now.  
  
“I don’t like feeling like a woman.”  
  
Erik taps his fingers lightly against Charles’ ribs, digging into the grooves between them. “Is that why you don’t want to be on your back?”  
  
“Yes. Mostly.”  
  
“And the rest of it?”  
  
A pause. Doesn’t Erik really expect him to answer? Another tap against his waist. So, yes. Why did he ever doubt—this is uncomfortable, so _of course_ Erik wants to drag it out of him. “It makes me feel splayed open, like one of those butterflies pinned under a sheet of glass.”  
  
Which, really, is how Erik looks at him sometimes, like he was meant for study and appreciation and everything good, though he never actually realizes that what he’s looking at is a little bit dead. Funny, that—the idea that something is not, as one would think, either all dead or all alive. Though, he’d never thought that he’d be living proof that there’s an in between.  
  
A soft press of lips to the side of his neck, up under the line of his jaw, startles him. “Let me reassure you, then,” Erik says, kissing again. “You are nothing like a woman—and I’ve had a few of them.” As if that is cause for amusement. But—another kiss, sugary sweet against his hairline. “Women are warm curves, more fragile. You—you’re soft and sweet and the lines of your body are beautiful, and women would kill for the complexion you have, but there’s more heft to you: you won’t break when I touch you. You aren’t delicate. Small for a man, yes, and some of your features are strikingly pretty—you eyes and your mouth—but no one would ever describe you as petite or feminine. Look at your hands: they’re square, somewhat stocky—not the fine bones of a woman’s hands. And your shoulders—they’re fairly broad. There’s a solidness to you.” Erik’s lips curve upward against Charles’ jaw, nudging a bit at the skin there as he smiles, moving his arms just enough to collect one of Charles’ hands and begin massaging at the knuckles, popping the stiffness out of it and kneading at bone and sinew. “And I’ve seen you in a fight. You’re scrappy, and even deadlier because you’re small. People underestimate you.”  
  
“I’m not _that_ small.” A poor reply, but he’s more concerned with the fingers running over his own, tracing at the skin between his fingers, journeying further up and skimming over his nails. Erik gives up the examination eventually in favor of grasping Charles’ hand in his own and squeezing affectionately.  
  
“Small enough,” Erik answers, huffing out a laugh that disturbs the fine hairs close to Charles’ ear, tickling the skin. “The perfect size. And as for your other concern: if you’re laid out for me, it will _only_ be for me, and I swear to you that you will always be safe. Any vulnerability you give me, I will never share with anyone else. And I would never use it to hurt you.”  
  
He jerks his head up a little, knocking Erik’s face away a few inches, though the effort is largely useless considering Erik still has his hand gathered in his own. “I’ll keep my vulnerability to myself, thank you.”  
  
“That isn’t what sex is about.”  
  
The downfall of more than a few men say differently: sex has been used as a power play for generations. There’s nothing much vulnerable about sexual acts when they’re being used to control someone else, and maybe you are giving something of yourself in return, but that’s only in the same sense that a warrior might leave a deliberate opening in order to lure his opponent into lunging, putting him in a position to be run through. The illusion of vulnerability, then.  
  
“Just the same, I don’t fancy giving you anything more than you’ve already taken.”  
  
There was never any real hope that Erik would take a hint, but it’s disheartening all the same when he pushes back in close, mouthing at Charles’ neck. But there is the small consolation that he’s let go of Charles’ hand—never mind, that was only so that he might slip his hand higher, up over Charles’s heart. Still beating for now, miraculously, after the number of times the life has been squeezed out of it.  
  
“Gods, you’re lovely,” Erik whispers into his skin—and there goes the conversation, flying off the rails. An expanse of creamy skin and a good dose of hormones was all it took. A bit of a high price, considering where it’s leading.  
  
“Thank you, _no_.” Like refusing a dish at dinner—and he gets his arm up, mashing his hand into Erik’s forehead and giving a good shove.  
  
By some miracle, Erik doesn’t reach out and grab. His breathing speeds up, and there’s a flush all the way up his neck, but beyond his blown pupils and the obvious frustration buried in that blackness, he’s remarkably patient with the rebuff. “You’re stalling.”  
  
He huffs. “Yes. So glad you noticed.”  
  
“Don’t be caustic.”  
  
“Then don’t touch me.” A rather tall order, considering he’s sitting in Erik’s lap, boxed in by his arms. Fight, though—he said he’d fight, and he will, until the last possible minute. And, when he can’t anymore, he’ll wait, and—it’s insane, this thinking, but it’s the last, best hope. Wait. Things will come full circle. Chances will present themselves.  
  
“That’s the opposite of where this is going, Charles.” Ah, and _there’s_ the frustration, leaking through. And, on that note: “Come on, up you get.”  
  
He isn’t so much dumped out of Erik’s lap as he is carefully leveled up, steadied by hands on his hips that don’t let go when he tries to move away. Part of him honestly expects to simply be scooped up and tossed on the bed, but Erik apparently recognizes what a disaster that would be and has instead elected to push him forward, heedless of any resistance from locked knees or stiffened muscles.  
  
But the second Erik’s fingers dip down under the collar of his shirt, things change. Anything he thought he knew—well, it’s very different when Erik’s looking to remove that last barrier between them. Clothes—clothes are _good_. Really bloody wonderful, actually, and he’d prefer to keep them on.  
  
“Don’t you _dare_ —“ he snarls, lashing around and striking out, grabbing for Erik’s arm. He connects, smacking their arms together, but—that was not what he wanted to hit, not at all. That’s only Erik’s palm, like a wall Charles can’t go through, catching his own arm and wrapping fingers around it, holding him back and steady and exactly where he doesn’t want to be.  
  
There’s always the other arm, and that’s worth a try, where he throws his weight to his other leg, dipping his hip down and then thrusting back up in an attempt to drive his weight into Erik and throw him off balance—and that arm is caught too, and he’s left with his arms pinned out wide to the sides of his head, held fast.  
  
Held by Erik, and his self-satisfied smile. “Hello, Love,” he murmurs, mirth curling his lips. And, probably just because he can, he leans forward and drops a kiss onto the tip of Charles’ nose.  
  
Too familiar, too affectionate—five years in the future, where Erik dotes on him and doesn’t fear his temper at all, because Charles hasn’t been able to push back the way he wants, and he’s become nothing more than precisely what Erik wants him to be. Tame. Receptive.  
  
 _No._  
  
Panic spurs him forward, but any momentum is easily absorbed by Erik: he barely tips, immediately throwing his own weight into it, and the balance tilts, teetering them both sideways, Charles’ feet working instinctively, matched step by step by Erik, like a brutal dance step that shatters out of existence with a sharp thud as Charles slides several feet across the wall before Erik succeeds in pinning him again.  
  
This likely isn’t how this is supposed to be going.  
  
The impact knocks a little of his breath out of him, but the hit wasn’t hurtful by any means. Only surprising. Definitely not worse than what he is now: pressed against the wall, Erik’s hands pinning both his wrists, taking care to steer clear of the bandage. Erik’s hips, too, are just a hint too close to be acceptable, without actually doing anything beyond brushing the fabric of their trousers together in a teasing whisper.  
  
“Ready to behave yet?” he asks lightly, eyes bright with amusement—and quite a lot of… whatever has dilated his pupils into dark, bottomless ponds.  
  
Behaving sounds so _sordid_ , and not like anything agreeable.  
  
Charles releases a thready sigh: the thing is, he really might do better to stop fighting, if only for the time being. Manipulate Erik, maneuver him into giving over little concessions, in order that this night might be endurable—and that it isn’t _good_ , either. Enjoying it would be as disastrous as any amount of pain and heartbreak.  
  
Because if he _likes_ this….  
  
Charles shoves his head back against the wall and raises his chin, peering down his nose at Erik until he can’t roll his eyes downward any further. He won’t like this. He’ll provoke Erik into hurting him, if that’s what it takes. But… that might not be best. Something in between—a compromise where this doesn’t all fall to pieces and leave him broken in the morning.  
  
Endure, _endure._ Survive, and then fight back later, once this is over.  
  
And who’s to say that he _could_ incite Erik into hurting him?  
  
Both his wrists are transferred into one of Erik’s hands and pulled above his head, held there as Erik reaches down again, and, just like what set Charles off, the bastard—he _knows_ too, a little devilish smirk tossed up toward Charles, right before Erik darts his gaze back down again to where his fingers are dipping under Charles’ collar, skimming a collarbone, wrist limp and trailing fingers as easily as he might pull them through a quiet pool of water. It’s so light and teasing, but the lack of substance nips at Charles’ nerves, making him more hyperaware than he might have been if it were a firmer touch, and already his skin is pebbling with gooseflesh. He’s hardly been touched, and he’s reacting.  
  
“All right, Love?” Erik asks, tilting his head and ducking in, resting his mouth, soft and steady, against Charles’ pulse point. He mouths at it, dabbing his tongue in time with the rhythm of the beat while his finger keeps on stroking, dipping a little lower.  
  
So hard to get breath—and words require air. “I’ve told you _no_.” _There_ is the air he couldn’t find—his words are all pumped full of it, too light and breathy. “But you aren’t listening. I’m not—I’m not all right.”  
  
“Am I hurting you?” The last two words are drawled out against his skin, accompanied by a slow drag of Erik’s mouth.  
  
And because it is too early to lie, to waste the last vestiges of his power on so obvious a fib: “ _No_.”  
  
A bit of tooth, just to mock him, of course. Erik will hurt him and make him like it. That’s the message here, isn’t it? Always Erik, always in control, unless, by giving that up, he can actually regain it. It’s a vicious paradox. “Tell me if I do.” Or, rather, _tell me if I do and you don’t like it._  
  
And, that easily—five small words—it all comes crashing down.  
  
What is he _doing_?  
  
“No!” Sheer, raw panic, and please, not his mind, that’s always been his own—and what did he ever think a bond really was? Erik will burrow into his mind, corral his powers, manipulate them himself, and Charles won’t be his own entity ever again. Hands on his skin, wall at his back—and he’s going to lose it all, right here, desperate and scared and liking this a little too much.  
  
“ _Stopstopstop_ —“ He pitches forward—toward Erik, not away, which must be what earns him enough of the element of surprise that Erik doesn’t pin him back, doesn’t catch him—and he’s falling, one hand clutching Erik’s coat, jerking him off balance and arresting his fall, firm enough that he lands on one knee, already sobbing before he ever hits the ground.  
  
So much for handling this with grace.  
  
But—by all the hells, does Erik think he’s _faking?_ Or does he simply not care? That would account for his grip on the hem of Charles’ shirt, the quick yank upward, trapping his arms above his head in a mess of straining cloth, where he can’t see—he can’t see—get it off, get if _off_ —  
  
It’s gone.  
  
Just like that, and he’s left, naked from the waist up, on his knees, gasping for breath, with the floor chilling his palms.  
  
“Gods, get off,” he garbles out, shoving away hands—wherever they come from—and snapping at the touch to his face, bracing his jaw. Held like that, he can’t move, but the touch isn’t cruel, only firm—all right, breathe, calm, yes, don’t panic like a child, _you are a grown man_ , and he will control himself.  
  
He’s left panting, on his knees, face held between Erik’s palms, as Erik hovers over him, equal measures concerned and… confused? Ah, well, Erik hadn’t known why he panicked—not really. Must be nice, not having to consider just why this circumstance feels like a death sentence.  
  
“All right,” Erik mutters, gazing down at him and blinking too quickly for normal. “Tell me what to do differently. Tell me what will stop that from happening again.”  
  
And the thing is, he _doesn’t know_. There is no easier. There’s just… _this_.  
  
Exhaling hard, he dips his head forward—exposing his neck to Erik is not the best tactic, but it’s so difficult to care—surprised when Erik lets him do it and trails along with him, slipping his hands around to cradle Charles’ forehead, hands chilled and slightly clammy, sticking to Charles’ skin.  
  
Wasn’t this exactly where he didn’t want to end up? On his knees. But his legs won’t hold him anymore.  
  
“I just can’t,” he says tiredly, mostly to the floor. Hopefully Erik will hear some of it. “This is what you wrecked the world for: just me, and I can’t even manage to lie back and let you get on with it.”  
  
Erik’s fingers twitch. “I never wanted anything more than _you_. Please, stand back up. Come on: I’ll hold you, and we’ll—it’ll be okay. Charles—I’ll—for a while, I’ll just hold you, all right? You like that, don’t you? When I hold you?”  
  
More than he should, and more than he can express, when Erik gets hands under his arms and helps him to rise, though it’s more of an upward flop—just a transfer of him, on his knees, to him, propped against Erik’s chest, limp and tired of holding himself up. He’s breathing easier, though, half-naked against Erik’s woolen dress coat. Those buttons are pressing a line up his chest and digging into his skin: if he pulls away, they’ll have left indents, and he’ll look like he’s all buttoned up, even without a shirt.  
  
“You really do have perfect skin, you know,” Erik murmurs, pressing a kiss to Charles’ shoulder. Open-mouthed, as almost always, but startlingly chaste: he rolls his face back over to peer at Charles, resting his cheek on the spot he kissed.  
  
Everyone always talks about his eyes—Charles and his beautiful eyes, hasn’t he heard that so many times?—but Erik’s are really rather stunning in their own way. Confused, like the man himself, changing in color and always sparking with emotion. Right now, though, they’re quiet on the surface, and rolling underneath, same as a wave about to overtake.  
  
“Freckles too,” Erik adds, offering a smile. But this one lacks the smugness of the previous few, coming across as patient instead—even a little sweet. “I like your freckles.”  
  
Charles has to crane his neck down, smushing his face into his own neck, just to get a better look at Erik’s expression. “Like skin constellations,” he answers dully. That’s what Moira had called them. And isn’t it just a blessing that he has his shields up? That was always so much easier—like second nature—than holding in his emotions. It shouldn’t be… but it’s something of a survival instinct, by this point.  
  
Moira. What would she think to see him now? And he can’t even utter her name.  
  
“Erik.” So, he’ll say Erik’s name instead. When—when did he become like this? So ridiculously used and cracked all the way through. “I—would you listen to me for a moment? Please?” Erik _did_ promise to always listen.  
  
Perhaps Erik remembers that, or it could be that he’s worried—and Erik _does_ care, doesn’t he? He isn’t a sadist, and he must want this night to go well, which would suggest that he’s willing to listen—to be a little warmer and more open, settling back in his own space, a few inches from Charles, with a slightly wary look on his face but also with real curiosity that wrinkles the skin at the corners of his eyes. They’re beautiful, those wrinkles. Authentic, and carrying parts of life in a way that perfectly smooth skin doesn’t. Erik is a young man yet, but it’s details like these—Erik isn’t perfect, and seeing that—Charles can work himself back down out of a panic and into the realization that this is _Erik_ , and he knows Erik—knows some of the events that made those lines. He knows who Erik is, yes? That will be enough—it will need to be enough.  
  
“Of course I’ll listen to you,” Erik answers quietly, more solemn than his face would suggest.  
  
All right, that’s a start. But, just to sweeten the pot, he wills his arm into moving, and though it feels detached, like watching someone else’s arm, it does the job well enough, finding its course to Erik’s neck and resting there, fingers twining in the short hairs at Erik’s nape.  
  
“I—“ There’s no good way to say this. “Could we… lie down for a few minutes and…  
just talk?” Which is really a nice way of saying that he can’t manage anything more right now. The Erik he’s facing doesn’t seem like the Erik he knew, the Erik he _wanted_. Maybe if they talk, reminisce a bit about how things were, it might be easier to remember that, at one point, he would have given quite a lot to be able to bed Erik—consequences notwithstanding.  
  
Erik’s brow twitches, and—if he says no, what then? There will be no playing along with this. His muscles have gone too stiff, and his heart is thudding worse than a rabbit caught in a snare. Whether or not he stands to gain something from cooperating, if Erik insists on sex _right this moment_ , it won’t be mutual, and it won’t be pleasurable. As cold as he feels—Erik’s hands are the only warm spot—there’s a very real possibility that he could space out altogether and burrow somewhere back down in his mind.  
  
He was never like this with battle, or with court, or with a thousand other things, but when it’s his body and every nerve is crawling with awareness of what it will be like to be touched, everything is different.  
  
Erik’s feet scuff at the floor, shuffling closer, but he doesn’t do more than drop a kiss to Charles’ forehead. “I think that would be a good idea.”  
  
All at once a rush of relaxation—thank you, _thank you_ —infuses Charles’ muscles back into less of a giant mess of knots and more into a semblance of a working system. This is good. This is progress. This is Erik not tossing him down and erasing everything about himself that might make this endurable.  
  
But… it does mean that he’s going to need to approach the bed. Refusing to go anywhere near it ever since he’s arrived has made that a taller order than it needed to be, but he can’t fathom having done this a moment sooner than necessary. Sleeping in it night after night—he’ll be doing enough of that now.  
  
Still, going to it, lying down—but he _can_ do it. It’s only a bed, and he has faced down armies. This is nothing. _This_ is all mental, and he _will get himself together._  
  
Erik tilts his head to the side and reaches out, taking both of Charles’ hands in his own. Very deliberately, he takes a step back. “I promise it’s a nice bed.” Another step, leaving Charles where he is, arms outstretched, hands cradled. Pretty soon, he’ll have to take a step of his own.  
  
He swallows. “I’m sure it is.”  
  
“We’ll lie down, and we’ll talk. How about—hmm.” He pauses, humming, and biting lightly at his lower lip. “What if we shared memories between the two of us? Things we’ve done together that both of us enjoyed. I’ll show you a memory from my perspective; you show me a memory from your perspective.”  
  
Not a bad idea. But—oh, there’s that next step, and, instinctively, he lurches right along with Erik, matching him. That’s one step closer, and his hip feels as though there’s a stick in its joint, locking up his movement, but no one ever said he had to be graceful, did they?  
  
“Acceptable?” Erik asks, giving his hand a light squeeze, and, just barely, inching his foot backward, not quite taking his weight, but prompting, inviting Charles to take the step first.  
  
Charles does. “Yes.”  
  
Erik shifts his weight to the foot behind him, mirroring Charles’ move forward. “And maybe a little wine, so long as you promise not to try to get yourself drunk.”  
  
As tempting as that is… “I promise.”  
  
“Good.” But Erik doesn’t let go. He must be intending to get the wine after he’s gotten Charles into the bed, which—damn him, it makes perfect sense. If he were released right this moment, he certainly wouldn’t keep up the progression toward the bed, and the impulse to flee might just prove itself overwhelming.  
  
One quick step back, then another, and another, but Charles keeps up, digging his fingertips down into Erik’s palms—only the fleshy parts of his fingertips. No nails. He’s only pressing, trying to anchor himself, and Erik is proving himself happy to oblige, leading him with a gentle, patient smile and a gaze that never leaves Charles’ face. He appears almost entranced, perfectly content to keep on looking and holding, right up until they bump back against the bed.  
  
It’s Erik’s upper thighs that are touching the bed, with Charles still a few feet off, but the impact shakes Charles, albeit in a different way: he startles, jerking his head back and eyeing the blue coverlet. The fabric is nice, soft—though he’s only felt it for a handful of seconds at any given time. The bed, too. It _is_ a needlessly big bed, and the mattress will surely prove to be splendid, same as the woodwork. But it isn’t _welcoming_ in the way that a mussed bed is, with rumpled sheets and a few of the pillows on the floor, indicating human connection between two people. A bed like that is almost a little home all on its own, used and acclimated to the two people within it. This bed—it’s cavernous, ready to swallow him up and hold him prisoner the same way this set of rooms has.  
  
Despite that, the bedding is soft when Erik gets his hands on Charles’ hips and tugs him forward, notching his thumbs into the belt. That one tug is enough to overbalance him and tip him into Erik, who bends back, sitting down on and leaning Charles over him, bumping their chests together and requiring Charles to spread hands down onto the coverlet in order to keep himself upright. “All right?” Erik asks, patting his right hip with his four free fingers, keeping his thumb in the belt. “Think we can take off your belt and the sword?”  
  
Wearing a sword at this point is quite silly, so, yes, in the interest of being dignified, he might as well. One hand on the bed will prop him up as well as he needs, and he puts his weight down on that while he gets his other hand up to pull at his belt buckle, while Erik leans back, still holding on. That must burn the muscles in his stomach something awful, but he _has_ seen Erik with his shirt off, and it’s not as though Erik is lacking in that area. The man does sit-ups before breakfast, for godsake—Charles has seen him.  
  
Placing the sword and belt aside on the bed table once he has the belt undone, he lets himself fall sideways to prop his hip against the bed. It isn’t quite getting onto the mattress itself, but it’s better than he’s been able to do since arriving here, and Erik is indicating that he’s content to wait him out, resting his hand on the hip not pressed to the bed.  
  
“Maybe the boots too?” Erik asks, looking downward pointedly.  
  
Oh, yes—it would be rather remiss of him to get into bed with those on: all that dirt, assuming he’s actually collected any on the immaculate floors of the palace. But he nods slowly, running his tongue over his lower lip until it’s slick with spit. It’s grown chapped at some point, and little flakes of skin poke at his tongue when he smoothes it along his lip: he bites down on one flake, pulling his bottom lip into his mouth, and peeling the strip of skin loose, tug by sharp tug. It stings, but the sharpness of it is good—wakes him up and keeps him from drifting.  
  
With one last solid pat to Charles’ hip, Erik lets go and slides to his knees, reaching for the clasps on Charles’ boots. A few quick tugs, and the metal clinks against itself, drawing a groan out of the leather: but—he hadn’t meant _that_. Erik doesn’t need to—“You don’t need to do that for me—“  
  
“I want to.” He darts a look up at Charles from under the curve of dark hair that’s dropped over onto his forehead. It’s usually combed so carefully back out of his face, and it’s odd how, when it’s down in his eyes like this, he could be five years younger, less sure of himself, and showing it in a general lack of perfect coif. “I like taking care of you. You shouldn’t forget that.”  
  
One foot at a time: the first one, the boot sliding off into Erik’s hand, only to be set aside as he goes to work on the other, tapping Charles’ calf when he wants him to lift his foot up. The buckle on this one sticks a small amount, but Erik just frowns and gets his knee up, patting it and signaling for Charles to put his foot there. There’s something disquieting about that—putting his foot on Erik’s thigh—but he goes, more or less without hesitation, since it seems so very small a thing to fight over.  
  
“Thank you,” Erik murmurs once he has it undone, petting Charles’ ankle, but hesitating, curing his finger to the protrusion of bone before, finally, he removes his touch and leans back, nodding for Charles to put his foot—now stripped of both sock and boot—back to the ground.  
  
At some point, Charles has settled fully into a seat on the bed. Who knew? Not him—he didn’t—when did that happen? He’d been so focused on Erik touching his ankle and running his fingers over the buckles.  
  
Erik is undeniably a sight when he rises back up to full height: crouched down like that, it was easy to forget how tall he is, towering over Charles when he’s. He could easily loom, blocking out all sight of everything else—courtesy of a very broad chest—but he hangs back, and while he does frame Charles’ body with his arms, hands propped on the bed to either side of Charles, he’s only leaning in, keeping his hips a few feet back, allowing his body to form a very wide _v._ “Try lying back?” he says, dragging the sentence out patiently.  
  
Easier said than done. With the boots gone, his legs seem nearly weightless, and it isn’t a feeling that he likes. Not at all. And Erik—he’s fully dressed. That won’t do at all. An inequity of clothes is such an unfair power differential.  
  
Charles tilts his head to the side, running his tongue over his lip, taking especial care to poke at the tiny cut he made earlier, just for the corresponding sting that it offers. “Take off your jacket?”  
  
Seems that was an agreeable request. Who would have known: Erik is apparently very eager to get himself naked. Right. Foolish comment. Obviously he wants to take his clothes off—and the grin splitting his face—goodness, he does have rather a lot of teeth—would suggest that he’s only too happy that Charles asked. Damn it, _why_ did he ask? Oh, right, power differentials, because he himself is already half naked, and that’s _embarrassing_.  
  
Embarrassing or not, it doesn’t promise to be the state of affairs for much longer: Erik is only too willing to shuck his military jacket, and though he’s still buttoned up in a linen undershirt, the contrast isn’t quite so stark. But the change is enough to bring some measure of relaxation, and the shirt can be dealt with, quite easily, actually, just by reaching forward—Erik is quite close—and beginning to pop the buttons open before he gets much of a chance to think on exactly what message that sends.  
  
To hell with that, though: any message he’s sending is lost in translation, probably about halfway out of his own brain when he gets a good look at what he’s getting. He’s seen Erik shirtless before, but it had never been _to touch_ , and he’d most definitely never felt this rolling mix of grudging arousal and absolute dread. That’s a fairly effective formula for self-conflict—the kind that paralyzes, which explains why he gets halfway done with Erik’s buttons and realizes, holy hell, he’s undressing Erik like this is something that he _wants_.  
  
Consent and permission and—if he plays along, is he consenting? Or is it only making the best of a bad situation? But if he _wants_ —is he even allowed to want? Bugger, he’s going to hate himself in the morning—not that he isn’t managing that quite well in the present. And… his mouth is too dry, and he ought to close it, stop looking at Erik like some sort of gaping fool. Really, though, Erik hadn’t looked this good by candlelight in a tent, and what he’s seeing—it’s understandably distracting.  
  
“Finish it up,” Erik murmurs, covering Charles’ hands with his own and setting them to work again on the buttons. Charles pliantly lets him, allowing his fingers to be manipulated, helping a little on his own, and then dropping his hands altogether as Erik tugs his shirt free from his pants and shrugs it back off his shoulders.  
  
There really is nothing for it: Erik is an enviably well-built man, and some measure of gawking is probably par for the course. In the interest of avoiding any truly obvious scenes, it’s better to do that gawking from under his lashes, maintaining plausible deniability that way—though Erik’s gentle smirk says that he knows very well that Charles is looking.  
  
To Erik’s credit, he doesn’t do anything so gauche as ask Charles any horridly stereotypical questions such as, “You like what you see?” That wouldn’t be much like Erik, who… his sort of confidence is quiet. There’s the sense that he doesn’t show off because he doesn’t think he needs to, and the unspoken confidence—that small smile, pleased that Charles does indeed “like what he sees”—has always been attractive. _I’m going to win_ his smile over the chessboard had always said, and _Didn’t I tell you so?_ was in a quick purse of his lips when he tipped Charles’ king.  
  
Not that he _always_ won, mind. They were frustratingly evenly matched.  
  
As long as Charles has been looking, it’s nothing short of a miracle that the only thing Erik does is to arch an eyebrow. “Feel better?”  
  
For now. They’re equitable this way, and that’s a start. And, as horrible as it sounds, getting a look at the bite mark on Erik’s arm, by this point fantastically bruised and in the neat shape of Charles’ mouth, is sickly satisfying. He put that there. He isn’t helpless.  
  
“I promise the bed’s very well made; better than anything we’ve ever shared before.” A quick jerk on Charles’ trousers. _Up._  
  
He’ll have to do it sometime, and it’s probably better to get this over with while he still has some of his clothes on. This is difficult enough already, shimmying backwards, Erik’s arms stretching out to follow after him as Charles gets his feet up on the bed and pushes, sliding himself back toward the headboard. Not so bad. Erik is following after him slowly, relaxed and patient—the only place he can’t hide his tension is in his fingers, were he’s far too stiff from holding himself back from taking a firmer grip—while he gets a knee up on the bed, then another knee, until, somehow, Charles has seated himself against the headboard with Erik kneeling in front of him.  
  
“Silk comforter,” Erik comments, titling his head and skimming a hand over it.  
  
Yes, it’s very nice. “And—“ Charles pulls the comforter back a few inches. “Black sheets.”  
  
Erik nods. “White seemed dull.”  
  
“They’re linen. Seems strange under the silk.”  
  
“You wouldn’t want silk sheets. Silk is horrible with sweat.”  
  
Implying that they’re going to be doing things that will get them both very sweaty. Erik doesn’t bother to deny that: he doesn’t say much of anything, actually, but contents himself with gliding the remainder of the distance between them, depositing himself next to Charles against the headboard. “Your skin—you’ll look beautiful laid out against the black.”  
  
What a horrid way to make a choice. Black—it always shows… well, it shows _things_. Ah, and there he goes, stiffening right back up again. Right good job he’s doing of convincing Erik he’s no blushing virgin, going scared at the mention of anything even vaguely relating to what Erik would like to do to him.  
  
“Shhh.” Erik leans in and leaves a kiss on his jaw, skimming his fingers across the opposite side of Charles’ face and tilting him up into the kiss. “Show me a memory. Here—“ One finger to his own temple, as he smiles softly. “Right in my mind. Show me something with both of us that made you happy. I want to see it from your perspective.”  
  
That _had_ been the agreement.  But minutes ago might as well be hours now. Though, the proposition isn’t abhorrent: lounging in memories will likely prove itself easier than lounging in this bed, and, since Erik is asking, it isn’t any sort of unwarranted stalling tactic.  
  
“Hmm,” he mutters, but—he reaches out a hand and splays it on Erik’s stomach, just… touching. “I think—“ So many memories that he could choose, but—yes, _that_ one. The one that feels warm in his mind, easy and comfortable to draw out with a few tendrils of mental energy. “Ready?”  
  
Erik’s hand covers his own: the palm is slightly clammy. Not so unaffected as he’s managing to appear, then? “Certainly.”  
  
Waiting for no further permission—why would he?—Charles curls his mind around the memory, plucking it out of place and dropping it into the forefront of his mind, sinking into it, fading….


	18. Chapter 18

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Still no actual sex (next chapter!), but some pretty heavy making-out.

_/“Please tell me you didn’t push Sean into the lake.”_  
  
 _Erik looks up from where he’s bent over his sword, rag in hand, polishing. That quick grin is more than answer enough, but Erik is certainly good for the verbal quip as well. “All right. I_ won’t _tell you.”_  
  
 _“_ Er _ik.”_  
  
 _The grin widens. “_ Char _les.”_  
  
 _That damn smile is infectious. “Why in the world would you push him in?” Of all the people Erik harbors fantasies of harming, Sean cannot possibly be near the top of the list. He may be a little green, but he tries hard, and he’s not so hopeless most of the time. A few more years, and there’s a good chance he’ll be a valuable leader._  
  
 _Erik leans back, looking like he’s preparing to settle in for an actual story. This promises to be interesting. Gods know Erik is never boring in his reasoning, nor are his expressions—humans shouldn’t actually be able to fit that many teeth into a smile. And… is he actually laughing? Whatever happened really must have been something._  
  
 _Scooting over to make room on the log where he’s seated, Erik nods toward the open spot, and, when Charles doesn’t immediately move, he raises his eyebrows and gives it a solid pat. “Come on then.” Another nod. “Sit.”_  
  
 _When put like that… he sits, and if his put-upon sigh is lacking in actual frustration, Erik doesn’t call him on it._  
  
 _Damn it, though, this close, Erik’s scent is enough to make any other consideration moot. This—_ this _is the reason why he put his cot on the other side of the tent. It shouldn’t be this ridiculously difficult to_ remember _that each and every time Erik beckons him to sit down, he always offers a spot that’s possibly—always—just a little too close. Charles never was a glutton for punishment before, and starting now is not a good plan._  
  
 _For a moment, Erik just stares at him, grinning. But he does finally answer: “He couldn’t swim.”_  
  
 _“So you_ pushed him in a lake _?”_  
  
 _What the hell goes on in Erik’s head? Children can produce more productive reasoning. More logical reasoning too._  
  
 _If possible, that grin gets wider. “He can swim now.”_  
  
 _“Gods damn it, Erik—“_  
  
 _But Erik is already laughing, a good, deep belly laugh, restrained at first, but taking off until he’s doubled over, and, when he glances up to the side at Charles, there are tears at the edges of his eyes, and his face is tinged red—_  
  
 _Charles is laughing too. Erik—he pushed Sean. In a lake. To teach him to swim. And the madman actually succeeded in_ teaching _him. How is this his life? This mad, crazy life that he’s living with this equally insane person. Erik is—gods, if Charles wasn’t already crazy, he’s going to be certifiable after this._  
  
 _“I got in too, if it helps,” Erik chokes out once the laughter has reached manageable levels. “Actually taught him how to swim properly. But he would never have gotten in if I didn’t… help him along.”_  
  
 _“You are a_ menace _.” He shakes his head, because_ Erik pushed Sean in a lake, the crazy fool. _He shouldn’t be allowed in polite society. But, then, none of them are particularly polite. Could be that Erik is right where he belongs./_  
  
He pulls out of his own mind to find that his body has already begun laughing. Particularly poignant memories will sometimes do that: force a physical reaction even when he’s stuck in the mental. Funny, though, that this _is_ such a poignant memory. It shouldn’t be: it’s such a little thing comparatively.  
  
There are many things that Erik can’t begin to understand—the past weeks have been a testament to that—but this mash-up of thought and memory doesn’t appear to be one of those things. The memory must have meant something to Erik as well, or else he’s simply notices the silk lining of Charles’ thoughts and comprehended that it’s lullaby memory, of sorts—nothing that was world-changing, but which has always soothed Charles.  
  
And what more could he want right now? To be calm—he’d pay rather a lot for that in the face of the impending.  
  
“I remember that moment,” Erik admits, chuckling. Memory must be an impetus: he slides languidly down the headboard, tossing one hand bonelessly behind his head on the pillow as he stretches out, staring thoughtfully up at the ceiling. “He wouldn’t let me get behind him for weeks after that. Can’t say that I blamed him.”  
  
“I think your intentions might actually have been good.”  
  
Erik snorts, but… there’s a hint of confusion, mingled with… not quite hurt, but at least a bit of a sting. “You make it sound as though they never are.”  
  
“I think they’re very often self-serving.”  
  
Oh, wrong thing to say? Erik tenses, dropping his head to the side on the pillow and peering upward. “Is that why you think I want you, Charles? Selfish gain?”  
  
Well, it isn’t likely that he wants to _share_. “You want what you want,” he admits, shrugging and immediately regretting it when it drags his skin against the cool wood of the headboard. The sheets abruptly seem the better option, though lying down next to Erik does _not_.  
  
That’s not to say that he’s given the choice: he must have frowned or winced or given some indication that he didn’t like the feel of the headboard, which Erik takes as permission to reach out and get a grip on his thighs, pulling him down the bed, heedless of the kicking that starts up, only to be easily muffled by Erik’s body.  
  
Erik lets go quickly enough, flopping back over onto his own half of the bed. “I _do_ want what I want,” he admits once he’s settled back into the pillows. “And I never denied that I want _you_. But… don’t you think I might care for your wellbeing?”  
  
When was it ever stated otherwise? If he did say that, it wasn’t what he meant. “It was never my intention to imply otherwise. Only that you don’t have the faintest clue what _is_ best for me. And I think you’ve colored your idea of what is ‘best’ for me in light of your own desires.”  
  
“You give me far more credit for complexity than I deserve.” He pauses, but it doesn’t last: he rolls over onto his side, propping his head up on his hand and staring over at Charles with a creased brow and a frown. “I don’t believe that you can honestly look at me and tell me that it never hurt you to deny yourself a bond or your nature or any of the things that go with being what you are.”  
  
That was never his argument. But… “Not as much as it hurts to find everything I ever worked for ripped away from me.”  
  
That may not be the answer Erik wanted, but it’s clearly the one he expected: “I want what’s best for you, and I truly, honestly believe that once the dust settles—and if you let yourself accept things the way they’ve become—you’ll be happier being what you are. Once you figure out that I want you to help me rule—you ought to understand, you’ve gained the ability to change _more_ lives.”  
  
Is that what he’s gained? Funny, he was under the impression that it was only at Erik’s will that he’d be able to do any of the things that have been promised. “Maybe that would be true if we wanted the same things. But you’ll never let me push for mutant and human equality. And you’ll never let me decentralize power back to the regions.”  
  
“No. So why not try for those things that we _both_ want?”  
  
Why? Because those things are so very scarce these days. “I don’t want to talk about this.” Not now, not ever—but especially not now, and if he has to duck out of this conversation like a coward… he’ll call it strategy.  
  
Seems they’ve found something to agree on: Erik lets the topic go remarkably quickly, and while that’s not enough to indicate he doesn’t _ever_ want to discuss it, he most likely has other more pressing hopes at the moment.  
  
Like sex.  
  
Wonderful.  
  
“I don’t think you understand how I really see you,” Erik murmurs after a moment. Apparently uncomfortable, he shifts his hips—the bed must truly be high quality: the movement never ripples over toward Charles at all. “We’ve bonded, yes—and we’ll finish that tonight—but that doesn’t mean I think you’re weak. Carrying children does _not_ make you weak, Charles, and it doesn’t make you a woman. I see you now exactly as I saw you before.”  
  
That is simply not true. The moment Erik realized he was a bearer, things shifted. Waking up in that tent—Erik had internalized the notion that he had a _right_ to what he wanted. They weren’t equals in the sense they had been, and all the pretty words in the world—and Erik’s own delusions—don’t change that.  
  
The crinkle of the comforter startles Charles, and he looks up to find Erik closer—and very intently fixed on examining his expression. “Would you like me to show you how I saw you that first time?”  
  
No, but… yes. He’d never known. And had Erik been as attracted at first sight as Charles had? That might have implications for the bond, if they were drawn together that magnetically.  
  
Saying ‘yes,’ though—it isn’t easy. It isn’t easy at _all_. His face pinches up—he isn’t smelling anything rotten, but his expression feels like it—and he twists his head into the pillow. If there were a way to keep from answering….  
  
But there always is, and, as has become common, it’s through Erik’s own presumption. “I’ll take that as a ‘yes.’” His hand reaches out to settle on Charles’ brow. “Ready?”  
  
Charles nods.  
  
And so they go.  
  
 _/Westchester is nothing like the South. It’s colder, for one, and that seems to have seeped into the people until year after year of ice has built up walls that can’t be breached without the benefit of long acquaintance and proven trustworthiness._  
  
 _For a boy who has grown up in the South, it’s a remarkably agreeable climate. No one questions his reserve; no one marvels that when he walks into a market he doesn’t stop to chat or to smile. There’s still gaiety surrounding him, but it’s shut off, confined to those who are familiar, and, because Erik is not familiar, no one expects him to act as if he were._  
  
 _If the leader of Westchester had been the prototype of his people, what Erik is about to do might have seemed an easier feat to accomplish._  
  
 _Charles Xavier of Westchester. A telepath. Young, Erik’s information had said. Handsome. An average fighter, but a hell of a strategist, and beneath what is reportedly a very amiable smile that speaks of genuine good intentions, he is a formidable opponent—and one who would be a very useful ally._  
  
 _But all that hidden under a pretty smile? There will undoubtedly be more to him: men like that, beneath their good nature and kindness, so often carry scars that so few will ever know. And if Xavier knows the minds of men—and he must, if he’s a telepath—that friendly smile can’t be fully natural. Just from the few words Erik has seen on paper, he’s already pegged Charles Xavier as a complicated man… and one worth meeting._  
  
 _It only remains to be determined whether or not he was right._  
  
 _“The king will see you now,” the guard—dark-skinned, which is odd for the North—tells Erik, not unkindly. Perhaps he actually enjoys guarding the king’s sitting room rather than, as most monarchs would insist on for a meeting, the throne room._  
  
 _About that: “Does he always take petitioners in a sitting room?”_  
  
 _If the guard resents the breech of etiquette, he doesn’t show it. In fact, he actually half-smiles. “Only if the business is unofficial.”_  
  
 _Really? If Erik were in Xavier’s position, he’d see that as all the more reason to utilize any psychological advantage—and sitting on a throne, towering over the petitioner certainly counts as that. Most men would cower to face a king in a near-empty, cavernous room while the man in question perches on a throne._  
  
/Which is why I prefer not to hold personal audiences there. I find cowering disagreeable. Now, do come in./  
  
 _Holy mother of—what? But… telepath. Still, there had been no indication that Xavier actively read minds—the opposite, in fact. All sources say he usually tries to respect privacy._  
  
/Yes, yes, I do. But, my friend, you’re thinking _very_ loudly./  
  
 _Whether or not he ought to believe that excuse is another matter entirely. But, if it is true, than anything he purposely projects ought to come across like a fog horn:_ /Get out of my head./  
  
/Then get _into_ the room./  
  
 _Fair enough. With a quick nod at the guard, who pulls the door back for him, he heads through the doors and into the room beyond._  
  
 _It’s nothing spectacular, as far as rooms go. Modest, actually, though very tasteful: the walls are all wood paneling, the carpet is a rich red, and the furniture a shade lighter than the paneling, and padded with leather. The fireplace is obviously meant to be the focal point, made of brick and framed by a golden-colored metal that is not, in fact, gold—it would be highly impractical for a fireplace—and topped with a fine wooden mantle that matches the paneling._  
  
 _The man sitting in one of the two chairs in front of the fire is far more spectacular than the room._  
  
 _He isn’t handsome in the classical sense. For one, he’s on the small side, though well proportioned, if a little thin—he will never fill the role of a rugged, handsome soldier. His face, too, is striking in a slightly unusual way: his nose is not quite right for his proportions—set a little too deeply into his skull—and there’s the sense that, if he weren’t to get enough sleep, his eyes are deep-set enough that he’d have prominent bags beneath them._  
  
 _But, gods above, it all_ works _. His face is boyish enough that circles under his eyes wouldn’t mean a thing. They’d hardly age him at all: he’d only appear like a very tired child, and a few blinks of those almost unnaturally blue eyes would reinforce that sense of innocence. Those lips too, are the kind of red that usually fades after youth, but here they are, smiling softly at Erik with what appears to be genuine pleasure. The poor sod is_ welcoming _, and how in the world has he managed to rule like this, when he looks so_ soft?  
  
Underestimated, _the intel had said… and now Erik is seeing why._  
  
 _“Hello,” Xavier says, rising from his chair to meet Erik with a grin and a handshake. His hands are warm and his grip firm—non-threatening, but not the sort to be dismissed. “Charles Xavier, pleased to meet you.”_  
  
 _Erik nods his head. “Erik Lehnsherr. And I would prefer that you stay out of my head.”_  
  
 _Xavier’s lips quirk in what looks like an honest expression of apology. “I’m sorry,” he says, tilting his head just enough that a few locks of his longish hair tumble into his face. “It’s truly sometimes very difficult to block things out when they’re thought too loudly, and I dislike shielding too heavily: it has the unfortunate effect of locking me in my own mind, which is… unpleasant. But I think I have the measure of your volume now. I’ll do my utmost to honor your request.”_  
  
 _What? Since when does a king apologize? Shaw never apologized, and he absolutely never projected such sincerity. But Erik has never been one to show when he’s thrown, so he simply nods and gives a short, “Thank you.”_  
  
 _Xavier doesn’t seem fooled: that wide-open good nature twitches with a hint of amusement, and his lips jump, though he smoothes them out too quickly for Erik to call him on it. “I’m told you have a proposition for me,” he says, gesturing toward the chairs and drop-stepping back, opening the space up to let Erik pass._  
  
 _“Proposition” would be one word for it. Desperation might very well be another. “I wouldn’t be bothering you if it weren’t—“_  
  
 _“You don’t like asking people for help, do you?” Xavier asks, tilting his head as he settles himself in the chair he recently vacated, watching speculatively as Erik does the same in the chair opposite._  
  
 _No, and neither does he like being cut off while he’s speaking. “I told you to stay out of my head.” This close, the warmth of the fire nearly radiates down to his bones, but the idea of Xavier in his head—it chills him far more than any fire could ever warm him._  
  
 _And, no, he does_ not _feel guilty when Xavier’s brow draws up, furrowing into a wave of tiny lines. Ridiculous eyebrows—no ones eyebrows should be that graceful._  
  
 _“I’m_ not _in your head,” Xavier insists. There’s a genuine hint of irritation to his expression, noticeable in the pinch at the corners of his eyes and the very thin line of his lips. “You know, I’m told that you’re very fond of the idea that mutants ought to be proud of what they are. It’s certainly a bit hypocritical of you to champion all gifts except those that personally make_ you _feel uncomfortable.”_  
  
 _Well, damn. A face like that, you wouldn’t think the person behind it would know how to cut where it hurts. But… strategist, they did say. It’s not so surprising that he knows how to quickly take the measure of a man and make use of it if need be._  
  
 _It doesn’t hurt that he’s_ right _. “That was not my intention,” Erik answers him slowly, rolling the words around in his mouth. They feel uncomfortably like an apology—and it’s been years since anyone has made him feel the need to apologize._  
  
 _“Maybe not. But it was the result.” Xavier leans forward in his chair, perching his elbows on his knees. Kingly and regal it is not, but it suits him somehow, as do the rather casual clothes that he’s wearing. Just a simple pair of brown boots and a loose gray v-necked, long-sleeved tunic that he’s only bothered to haphazardly belt. Maybe this morning it was in place properly, but it’s rumpled by this point, more firmly tucked into the belt on the left than on the right, leaving a large swatch of hanging fabric on the right and exposing the line of his hip further up. Even his brown trousers are moderately wrinkled over the thighs._  
  
 _As far as kings go, he looks nothing like those Erik has encountered._  
  
 _Thank the gods. He’ll take a bit untidy over Shaw’s ridiculous pomp any day._  
  
 _Better yet, he’s getting the sense that Xavier is also as inwardly different from Shaw as it’s possible to be. With any luck, that will help with what Erik is about to do._  
  
 _“Whoever told you I had a proposition reported correctly,” he tells Xavier. No reaction. Not yet. “I would like to ask you about the possibility of allying in an attempt to stop Shaw.”_  
  
 _To Charles’ credit, he doesn’t laugh Erik out of the room—which many people might. Instead, he merely quirks an eyebrow and smiles softly. “Going against the King of Genosha? Many people would think you mad, my friend.”_  
  
 _“But_ you _don’t.” Saying so is a gamble—but… nothing wagered, nothing gained. And Erik has been in spots where there was far more to lose. He_ has _lost far more than what he stands to lose here._  
  
 _That eyebrow climbs higher. “Oh? What makes you say that?”_  
  
 _Gut instinct. But that’s hardly an acceptable answer. Better to simply state the facts: “I don’t believe you had no knowledge of what I came here to propose, but, even if that were the case, simply receiving me is a risky move: Shaw will see it as an affront, and, if you’re willing to risk his ire, you must have a play of your own.” He pauses, and—it’s really frighteningly easy to enjoy the spark of amusement in Xavier’s eye. It feels like approval—like Xavier sees what he’s doing, the web he’s spinning, and is enjoying the mental finesse of it. That look—it could be dangerously addictive. “I’m told you’re a master strategist, my lord, and, if that truly is the case, then I have no doubt that you see Shaw’s end game, and you understand that, if he were to accomplish what he’s set out to do, it would mean nothing good for any of us.”_  
  
 _Still, Xavier doesn’t give anything away: he covers his mouth with his hand, palm resting on his cheek while his fingers curve about his mouth, hiding his expression. “And what is it that you think he’s set out to accomplish?”_  
  
 _I see your gambit and I raise you mine: clever of Xavier, to give him nothing until Erik has given him all. As opening volleys go, it’s a perfect one—and better still because it’s working. Never before has Erik ever been moved to reveal so much without obtaining sufficiently damaging collateral._  
  
 _He crosses his ankle over his knee and leans back. It wouldn’t do to appear too eager. “You know as well as I do that Genosha is already the effective head of government for all the regions. There’s a delicate balance of power between the decisions that are left to the regions themselves and those that are made by the central government. It’s well known, my lord, that you’re a regionalist and that you’d far prefer there were no central government at all. It must worry you that Shaw has absorbed Charleston into Genosha with no reason beyond Charleston’s shaky economy. You_ know _he controls the South almost entirely now.”_  
  
 _Xavier taps a finger against his chin and hums—neither a yes nor a no. “Go on.”_  
  
 _With those blue eyes staring at him like that, he could hardly do otherwise. What_ is _it about this man? He practically begs to be trusted. “There’s an army on the border of the Midlands. No news source whose editor wants to keep his head will report on it, but the army is active and positioned to invade.”_  
  
 _Finally, Xavier drops his hand from his mouth and straightens up, laying his arms out on the lines of the chair, fingers curling over the edges. He has nice hands—strong-looking, capable hands, slightly worn from what appear to be—pen calluses? Odd: one would think he’d spend more time handling a sword. And what would it be like to see Xavier fight? Whatever his capability, he must present quite a sight, pushing his body through the physical exertion of sword work. “Do you have proof of this?”_  
  
 _Erik doesn’t look away. “I don’t need to give you proof. You already know.”_  
  
 _That’s only a shot in the dark, but it looks like it was a good one: Xavier’s smile curls more firmly into place, and he huffs softly, almost a laugh. “And what makes you think that?”_  
  
 _“You wouldn’t be as good as they say if you didn’t take precautions.”_  
  
 _“Trying to flatter me, Mr. Lehnsherr?”_  
  
 _“I’m telling you the truth. And you don’t need more than that.”_  
  
 _Xavier outright laughs. “To convince me or to flatter me?”_  
  
 _“Either._ Both _.”_  
  
 _For once the truth is working for him. Erik… he doesn’t like to think of himself as a dishonest man: more one that is selective in what he shares. Lies are so often unnecessary: holding things back or selectively offering them up works far better. But, in this case, offering up what he really thinks is working in his favor._  
  
 _Odd: a king who likes truth. Who would have thought?_  
  
 _Slowly, Xavier shakes his head, sending his hair tumbling, messy enough that he sweeps a hand through it, pushing the strands back out of his face. “Say that you’re correct on all counts. What is it that you think I can do for you?”_  
  
 _And definitely, absolutely no need to lie now: “I think you can help me stop him.”_  
  
 _There isn’t a trace of surprise on Xavier’s face. “Oh?”_  
  
 _“Oh,_ yes _. Eventually, he’s going to come knocking on your door, and by the time that happens, there will be no one to help you. The same thing that’s happening to Midland will happen to you. I don’t have an army. I’m only one man, and while I can do a great deal of damage—“ Xavier mutters something under his breath that sounds a lot like “no doubt,”“—I can’t fight an army all on my own. But you—_ you _have an army. If we worked together—“_  
  
 _“Tell me why I shouldn’t just go after Shaw while leaving you out of it.” Honest, frank: he folds his hands in his lap and stares over at Erik, waiting._  
  
Convince me _, that stare says—because Xavier will hand him nothing easily. Erik might just have to find it in himself to respect Xavier for that. “Because I_ know _him. I spent my childhood as his captive, and I know how he thinks. You might be brilliant at what you do, but even_ you _can’t compensate for_ that _.”_  
  
 _“And if I_ do _help you?”_  
  
 _Erik hardly blinks. If he’s turned down now—but it doesn’t feel as though he will be. Xavier hasn’t looked away, and the force of his stare almost rattles Erik’s own, like two matching magnetic poles, forced together, repelling, repelling—and then flipping, sending the opposite poles smashing together. “Then we do this together.”_  
  
 _“We lead an army to stop Shaw.” It doesn’t sound like a question._  
  
 _“Yes.”_  
  
 _“I could just pledge to send some of my men to aid you.”_  
  
 _It’s unexpected, how tight his chest feels at that prospect. He doesn’t_ need _Xavier. He_ doesn’t _. But he does_ want _him. How strange. All these years he’s worked alone, and it’s a spoiled king with too-pretty eyes that finally breaks that trend. Who would have thought. “You could,” he agrees. “But I think that would be a potentially fatal oversight. And so do you.”_  
  
 _Xavier chuckles and dips his head, peering up at Erik with a smirk from under his lashes—ridiculously long lashes, too. As though Xavier needed any more help to make his eyes stand out. “You seem awfully fond of telling me what I think, Mr. Lehnsherr.”_  
  
 _Is he? He… might like to be. Xavier seems the sort of man worth getting to know. “You aren’t the only one who can take the measure of man.”_  
  
 _“No. Nor, do I think, am I the only one capable of using that to my advantage. Don’t pretend you aren’t trying to manipulate me.”_  
  
 _“I’d never tell you otherwise.”_  
  
 _Xavier sits back quickly enough that he hits the backrest of the chair with a soft thump. A little like a youth bouncing on the furniture, actually. Half the time this man seems hardly capable of being left to his own devices—someone_ _really ought to be looking after him, ensuring that he gets the proper amount of sleep to keep those circles from developing under his eyes; watching that he eats, because he looks too thin. The other half of the time, those eyes of his cut down to the bone with sheer competence and insight. Xavier is the most fascinating conundrum Erik has seen in years—and, damn it all, that means wanting to solve him._  
  
 _Not a good idea. Not. At. All._  
  
 _But very enticing all the same._  
  
 _“Well.” Xavier purses his lips, evidently smothering a smile. “I do appreciate the honesty.”_  
  
 _That’s nice—but only if it’s effective. “Is it working?”_  
  
 _The smile wins out. “Completely, I’m afraid. I find that I’m really very inclined to help you.”_  
  
 _And, miracles of all miracles, Erik answers with a smile of his own./_  
  
The edges of the memory blur and fade, sliding back into the sharper lines of reality, and leaving them once again spread out on the bed. This one, though—this memory—is harder to shed than most others. It feels like decades ago: so much has changed. That he and Erik were ever those people, swapping sparks of wit in their own private show of intellect and strategy—it ought to be impossible. Thinking back on a day when Erik’s company was a joy that set his mind alight, and when his presence didn’t bring with it the stain of guilt—everything is tainted by what’s happened, and it’s been so long now since he’s been able to think of Erik without that slow grind of grief and resentment.  
  
“You may be the smartest man I’ve ever met, you know.”  
  
“That isn’t—“  
  
“Charles.” An obvious admonishment, though not without affection, and the hand that he slides over Charles mouth curls against his jaw rather than smothers. At some point Erik has turned on his side, propping himself up on his arm and pushing himself flush against Charles’ side, though when that happened is anyone’s guess. “Let me pay you a compliment, all right?”  
  
Not, it isn’t all right. Compliments and familiarity—and a whole lot of attraction—are what got them into this mess—not that Erik thinks it’s a mess. Unfortunately, biology seems to agree with him, and it’s quite inconvenient, heating up all over, to the point where he must be blushing—but it’s quickly becoming unavoidable. Half the world has narrowed down to the point where Erik’s hand is covering his mouth; the other half to where they’re lying together, touching.  
  
Bloody hell: a kind touch and some fond memories, and he’s fading into Erik’s magnetic pull as surely as metal itself ever did. Pathetic. To be this easy—it’s demeaning.  
  
Yes, but—this is happening. If this makes it easier…?  
  
It was Erik he wanted, right? The Erik that he knew during the hunt for Shaw. His _friend_. Isn’t that what these memories are showing him?  
  
How very much he’s missed his friend….  
  
“The look on Shaw’s face, when he realized who it was who planned that last offensive. Westchester’s peace-loving king, who never excelled at swordcraft. He dismissed you in every possible way, and look where it got him.” Erik grins, laughing a little and sliding his fingers back, trailing them down Charles’ face and positioning them to take up a seat on his shoulder. “I think that might have been one of the best moments of my life.”  
  
“You underestimated me too, you know. You’ve just shown me so.”  
  
“Yes, and I believe that I also showed you that I realized relatively quickly how wrong I was to do that.”  
  
True. Erik always has been a quick study. “You regret it?” Right. He… he really did just ask that. As if he wants an answer. Honestly, some days he ought not to open his mouth. But… best to see it through: he rolls his head to the side, meeting Erik’s eyes, scarcely half a foot from his own. They’ve been sharing a pillow this whole time.  
  
Erik blinks, appearing genuinely surprised at the question. “Never.”  
  
“I’m going to give you cause to regret it.” And that’s a promise. However this turns out—he’s never going to make it easy for Erik. He can’t—if he wants to be able to live with himself, he _can’t._  
  
“Cause to regret realizing I shouldn’t underestimate you? I don’t think that’s what you mean. I think you mean that you’re going to make me regret falling in love with you.”  
  
Yes. But that’s really what this conversation was always about, isn’t it?  
  
“And that, Charles—“ He leans in, smoothing their cheeks together, shifting skin against skin and getting a grip on Charles’ leg, pulling him over, until Charles is half on top of him, Erik’s arm draped over him, with Charles’ head cradled on his chest.  
  
He should move. He should fight this. But… he closes his eyes, breathing out against skin, then inhaling the musk of sweat and comfort and familiarity, of the want and affection that’s leaking out of Erik—and Charles might have lowered his shields to let some of it in, his mind instinctively soaking up the affection when he ought to turn it away. He and Erik, and this easiness that existed between them, when they worked together and were good and right, and things were _simple._  
  
But that’s memory—it’s always simpler in memory.  
  
“I’ve wanted you for longer than even _I_ understood, you know,” Erik whispers, his lips mumbling the words directly into Charles’ skin, muffling them somewhat, though his meaning could never be lost. “I was acting as your provider far before I knew you were a bearer.”  
  
That’s true. It’s almost embarrassing how long it took him to realize what Erik was doing—that biology was making itself damnably known by pumping out hormones that were affecting Erik when Erik didn’t even know what Charles was.  
  
“Show me one of those memories, hmmm?” Nuzzling sweetly into the juncture of Charles’ neck, begging for a story, where he already knows the ending—but that’s Erik: bound by the past and not always particularly good at foreseeing consequences for the future.  
  
Indulging that is a terrible idea.  
  
And Charles buries his face in Erik’s chest, and, breathing in deeply, does it anyway.  
  
/ _”How long has it been since you’ve slept?”_  
  
 _Oh, son of a—he startles, banging his knees into the desk and swearing violently. At least that wakes him up, though. Thirty-six hours without sleep, seeing to the wounded, sending in figures, mapping where Shaw’s retreat must have taken him. The battle would more properly be called a draw: the only reason they’re claiming victory is because Shaw did eventually retreat. But they didn’t gain what they wanted: the whole point was to pin Shaw down, and since he’s escaped—well, there’s more planning now, that’s all. Captives to process and interrogate, and he’s in the midst of examining Shaw’s path of retreat in hopes of figuring where he’ll go to ground and what his next move will be, and he’ll need to out-think that, be ready, when retaliation could come at any time. It’s for the same reason that they have to send scouts in the opposite direction of Shaw’s retreat, just to be sure he isn’t sending someone around to take them by surprise—_  
  
 _“Stop thinking.”_  
  
 _Charles blinks. “What?”_  
  
 _Erik. Yes, Erik. Standing in the doorway of their tent, arms crossed over his chest and feet planted squarely, in line with his shoulders. He doesn’t think he has tells—things that give away his moods—but for those who know him well—granted, there are very few people who do—he’s not as subtle as he’d like to think, and right now he’s practically screaming worry and displeasure._  
  
 _“I’ve been out in the field for the last twenty-four hours, pursuing Shaw’s rearguard, only to lose him, and then I come back to find that, while I’ve been gone, you’ve run yourself into the ground? Losing Shaw was enough to make me_ very _irritable, Charles, and we’ve already had a talk about you taking care of yourself—“_  
  
 _If by talk Erik means: Erik talked and Charles ignored._  
  
 _“Yes,” he snaps, setting aside the maps. This will need his full attention, and Erik isn’t likely to let him go back to reading anytime soon. “But in the face of a retreat and possible counter-attack, you’ll forgive me if I don’t prioritize eight hours of sleep and three square meals a day.”_  
  
 _Miracle of all miracles, that coaxes Erik into cracking a smile. “Certainly I’ll forgive you. Nice of you to ask.” Sarcasm. This is shaping up nicely. Soon they’ll probably crack on toward deadpan and maybe even black humor if they’re feeling adventurous. “And now, because we both have very competent officers who know where to find us if necessary, we’re going to delegate authority, and, after I see that you’ve gotten a hot meal, we’re both going to catch some sleep.”_  
  
 _“I have things I need to do—“_  
  
 _And apparently that means nothing at all to Erik. Oh, dear, no, that’s not—Erik strides across the tent and—“Oh, really, Erik, is that necessary? No, don’t“—yanks Charles’ chair out, despite the fact that Charles is still in it, and, heedless of the mess of papers that Charles tries to lunge back after, hooks an arm down under his knees, then gets one under his shoulders, and—_  
  
 _He cannot be serious._  
  
 _“Put me_ down!” _But it comes out more like an angry squawk of surprise than an actual reprimand._  
  
 _Erik’s chest rumbles with a laugh. “Gladly.”_  
  
 _No, not like that! The cot, no—how terribly undignified—_  
  
 _But Erik does as he pleases and happily drops Charles down onto his cot. Fine. If he wants to be this ridiculously absurd about interfering with work, Charles need only wait until Erik gets up to retrieve the aforementioned food before he makes his escape, and to hell with any other of Erik’s other orders too._  
  
 _No such luck—and Erik’s answering displaying of toothy smile makes it all too clear that he thought this out. The reason for grinning only reinforces that—and, goodness, that smile can go_ wider _—when a scrap of metal hops up into the air, twisting around itself and lengthening out, shooting for Charles just as he realizes what it is and tries to dart off the bed._  
  
 _“Shame,” Erik tells him, evidently very pleased with himself when the metal snaps to Charles’ wrist and pulls him up short, attaching itself via a small chain—which was, seconds ago, several of their forks and spoons—to one of the poles of the cot. “Too slow.”_  
  
 _“Damn you—“_  
  
 _That smile is nearly_ blinding _—and it is not at all endearing that Erik cares this much. It is_ not _._  
  
 _“I’ll just drag the cot with me,” he snaps, huffing and, all right, childish, yes, fine, but he will glare at Erik if he so pleases. Better yet, he’ll do exactly as he threatens, even swings his legs over the side of the bed to get started—_  
  
 _He probably should have remembered that Erik adores a challenge. “Oh?” His eyes are all-but dancing with glee. No doubt the man needs to get out more if this is the pinnacle of his entertainment. “Will you? I would think that hard to do when—oh, hmmm—“ Casually, he reaches out, flipping his wrist and flopping his hand in the general direction of the cot’s legs—the very same legs that narrow and sink into the ground, morphing into a corkscrew pattern and shredding through the dirt until they’re in good and deep. “Good luck pulling those out.”_  
  
 _For godsake, really?_ Really? _“You are such a child!” One yank at the cuff on his wrist, then another. It’s not coming off. Not until Erik wants it to._  
  
 _Taking care to show a good deal of mock concern, Erik sets a hand to his shoulder and pushes him back to lie against the bed. “No, no, don’t strain yourself. You just sit there and rest and I’ll cook us dinner.”_  
  
 _“No, what you’ll do is take this blasted thing off my wrist and let me get back to work!” But… he isn’t really angry, is he? Frustrated, but… there’s a little bubble of warmth in his chest, and it flairs, warm and bright._  
  
 _Erik’s brow furrows with—no, that’s only mock concern: he’s_ mocking _Charles. “That’s strange. Because that wasn’t what I planned to do at all.” And, probably just because he can, he reaches out and chucks Charles under the chin. “Agree to disagree then?”_  
  
 _“To hell with you—“_  
  
 _“That’s not a very nice thing to say to the man who’s going to make you dinner.”_  
  
 _“Erik!”_  
  
 _But already Erik is stepping back from the bed, moving over to their packs—and, by this point, everything they own is mutual, half of Charles’ things having migrated into Erik’s pack and vice versa. Their lives have twisted together out here in the field, which goes a long way toward explaining why Erik thinks he can do this—_ this _being the horribly irritating piece of metal that is currently chaffing Charles’ skin, and which isn’t coming off no matter how many nasty things he snarls at Erik while Erik digs through their supplies, pulling out various foodstuffs and a lighter, obviously in preparation for a cooking fire. Hot food—and that_ will _be nice, Charles does have to admit._  
  
 _“It’ll have to be rice, I’m afraid,” Erik calls over his shoulder. “But I’ve managed to get us some wild game that I think will go nicely in a rice stew, and then there’s the potatoes and the peppers, and—“_  
  
 _Erik has been out collecting, then. Gods only know what he had to bargain with in order to get a hold of actual fresh vegetables. Though, the wild game he probably caught himself. Possibly with nothing more than his bare teeth and sheer determination if he was feeling particularly impressive._  
  
 _“Erik!”_  
  
 _“Not listening, Charles.” So bright and cheery, entirely unbothered._  
  
 _Erik has never been a liar, though now might be a good time to start—turn over a new leaf by going back on his word and letting Charles up off the bed. Five or so minutes after the fact, though, hope for that is essentially extinguished, and Charles finds himself grudgingly settling down onto the cot, glaring at Erik’s back while Erik chops vegetables, and skins and cooks what does admittedly look like a very tasty rabbit._  
  
 _Unfortunately, it’s hard to keep glaring once Erik eventually brings him a bowl of the stew._  
  
 _Hot food. Forget everything he’s said in the last few minutes—this is heavenly, and Erik is a saint, and—_  
  
 _“That noise you’re making is probably against the law in most public places, you know.”_  
  
 _What? He—oh. Yes, well, it’s very good stew, and he hadn’t meant—_  
  
 _Gods damn Erik, he’s_ smiling _. “It’s good, all right?” he bites out, but there’s really no heat to it, and upon enduring a dozen or so seconds of Erik’s suppressed, just-begging-to-burst-out smile, he cracks and ends up grinning, shoveling another spoonful into his mouth._  
  
 _Hardly before a sound leaves Charles’ mouth, Erik starts laughing right along with him./_  
  
“See? _That’s_ what I want.”  
  
Sliding out of the memory, Charles comes to, cushioned on Erik’s chest and breathing evenly, lulled by the pleasantness of what he’s just relived. Pleasant being a relative thing, no doubt, when Erik’s eventual controlling tendencies were already reflected in that earlier, outwardly sweet memory. If he’d known what to look for, he might have known early on how this would end up.  
  
If? _If?_  
  
Lying to himself is unforgivable and cowardly, but here he is doing it. He always knew, deep down. He’s a bearer, and he liked Erik’s doting, simply choosing not to recognize that it was courting behavior, triggered by pheromones that are emitted when a particularly good genetic match presents itself. The better the match, the stronger the pheromones. Simple as that.  
  
Not very simple at all.  
  
“You, letting me take care of you,” Erik presses on, dipping his fingertips down the curve of Charles’ back, switching from pointer to middle finger, then both, then his ring finger, mapping the swells and dips of his body. “I love your freckles.” He stops to drag a hint of nail against one such spot, treating it to more attention than a skin abnormality deserves, surely.  
  
“I was hardly _letting_ you, even then, you know. Back then, I just found it endearing that you refused to be deterred.”  
  
Erik’s chest rumbles as he hums his acknowledgement—like a mini-massage against Charles’ cheek. “And what’s changed?”  
  
“If you don’t see the difference, nothing I could tell you will have an effect.”  
  
“That’s a very pessimistic view.”  
  
It’s a real one. It’s the kind of view that takes into account Erik’s fingers, dipping low and stealing under the waist of Charles’ trousers, where the skin is usually always hidden—and he has never been naked from the waist down in Erik’s presence when he’s been awake to remember it. After his injury in that final battle, Erik must have seen him without his undergarments, and in the days immediately following the fall of Westchester, when he’d woken to find himself dressed in Erik’s clothes, he would have had to be stripped then too. Even in the later instance, though, his undergarments had been the same, so Erik may not have undressed him completely, though he certainly would have had to possess admirable restraint not to sneak a quick peak at what he’d eventually be getting….  
  
“ _Do_ you see a difference?”  
  
There must be something about how he asks the question: Erik deflates a little beneath him, sighing thickly and curving his palm to the swell of Charles’ lower back, just below his waistband. “Yes, Charles, I do.”  
  
“Then why doesn’t it matter to you?”  
  
“Because, even though it’s difficult, this is how it’s _meant_ to be.”  
  
That’s horribly insulting: he frowns into Erik’s shoulder. “You don’t think I can take care of myself?”  
  
“I think you _can_ ; I don’t think you should have to. I think you deserve to have someone take care of you.”  
  
“’Deserve.’ That’s an interesting word.”  
  
Erik’s palm flexes, kneading a handful of flesh, sending little sparks of something… not entirely unpleasant up Charles’ back. It pricks at his skin and the nape of his neck, tingling all over his scalp. “And evidentially one you don’t agree with.”  
  
“Do I deserve to have my every move controlled?”  
  
Another sigh. “You know that wasn’t what I meant.”  
  
What he meant, yes—what he meant. What he means with his words, and what Erik means with those clever, clever hands, working a rhythm into Charles’ flesh, the other hand joining the first and bracketing Charles in, pushing him further onto Erik’s chest. He’s lying nearly atop him at this point, which is actually more difficult than he’d have thought: they’re sticking together from the friction—sweating skin on skin—but it’s a small matter to shift himself the slightest amount, bucking up into those hands and shoving his face back into hiding, waiting, waiting—waiting on what?  
  
“What did you mean then?” he whispers.  
  
No answer is immediately forthcoming, but Erik’s breathing has hitched, then stopped, so an answer must be hiding in the bated breath. And, finally, it does come: “I meant that you’re lovely and better than this world deserves. I...” A deep breath, held, as he nuzzles under Charles’ chin. “I meant that you make me want to do things for you, just by being you, and that I hate it when the world hurts you—and that I want to wake you up with little touches every morning, look at the blue in your eyes when you’re just waking, and know that, today at least, no one is going to hurt you, because you’re mine.”  
  
Oh. _Oh_. If it were that simple….  
  
It is _never_ that simple.  
  
It’s skin and lust and instincts, biology and societal indoctrination, and so much more than just Erik’s… love. It _is_ love, isn’t it? No, that isn’t a question—it shouldn’t be asked like one. It _is_ love. Under all of the other rotting mess that they’re drowning in, that’s still there, distilled from the easier moments when Erik’s smile was just Erik’s smile, and not a form of suppression.  
  
“ _You_ are hurting me,” he murmurs, slipping the words past his teeth in a line of air that feels surprisingly stringy, catching around his teeth and tangling, tripping him up. “You—“  
  
He is heat and want, skin and something too close, that burrows in under Charles’ ribs and ignites a fire, that presses him closer against Erik’s body, aligning their hips and their chests, his chin resting on Erik’s collar bone, where the difference in height leaves him far enough down Erik’s body so as to look up into his face, same as Erik looks down, slotting their gazes together. In the course of things, their feet have tangled, and Erik’s ankle runs against Charles’ calf, up and down, over and over, doing its best to wipe away the tension. “I’m not hurting you,” Erik mutters, bubbling the words out over Charles’ lips—blurbs of air, tumbling and breaking over his lips, closer, closer—  
  
A kiss is more solid than air, but it’s not so different in the essence of it. Words, being spoken into his mouth, less audible, sure, and wetter, when Erik pushes forward, coaxing and prying, but… Charles gives, opening for him, collecting Erik’s tongue in against his own and stroking at it, saying just what he means—well, no, not really. He’d bite if that were the case. Kiss and bite. But this, here—nothing but kissing, tasting the duck from dinner and, in his own mouth, the white wine. That won’t be pleasant for Erik, if that really ever mattered.  
  
They break with a soft gasp—the both of them, sharing air again. But it’s Erik who turns it around and does something with the breath: “It only feels like hurt. But I promise—you’ll be better off this way.”  
  
No, he won’t. Kisses and promises and more captivity, where he wakes up in Erik’s bed, pregnant, trapped, loved, wanted—he’s killing himself with his own desires. It could never be anything else: Erik’s only hurting him with what Charles has given him. “You _ruined_ me—“  
  
In every sense of the word. Why not sexually as well? Those hands—safe and cradled, and with heat swelling up at the base of his spine, splintering off and stabbing him up and down his body. He squirms. Foolish idea—it rubs him against Erik, against the horridly constrictive cloth that’s pinned to his lower body.  
  
But Erik isn’t done yet: even with his hands now so far down Charles’ trousers—how did they get unbuttoned?—that he’s kneading at the top of Charles’ buttocks, he won’t let things slip until he’s ready: “One more memory.”  
  
“What?”  
  
“Let me show you what I thought when I found out that you were _mine_. My mate. _My_ bearer.”  
  
Saying “no” is not an option, not when Erik’s mind is already pulsing against his, right in rhythm with his mouth to Charles’ lips; not accepting was never viable. His mind and body bend under the pressure, mouth opening to suck on Erik’s tongue—slick and warm and wet—just as his mind latches onto the memory and _takes_ —  
  
 _/Charles looks far too pale, but that’s probably to be expected after the amount of blood he lost. Too many stitches to remember the number, and there will be a scar from his side down to his upper thigh. But, all things considered, it’s far better than it could have been: a few inches to the right and the blade would have caught a major artery, and there would have been no stopping him from bleeding out._  
  
 _So close._ Too _close._  
  
 _It won’t happen again. Charles won’t be going into battle again. Not ever._  
  
 _Breathing out heavily—if only the lingering fear, drummed up from watching Charles fall, would go with it—he leans forward in the chair on which he’s perched, closing the distance between himself and Charles and—he’s allowed to touch now. He can reach out and mould his hand to Charles’ forehead, checking for fever for what must be the fifteenth time in the last hour. It would be remiss of him not to—a shirking of a sacred duty._  
  
 _Taking care of Charles. That_ is _his duty, and he may have been doing it since shortly after he met him, but now it’s_ more _._  
  
 _“I need to speak to you,” the surgeon had said when he’d come to find Erik, pacing outside the medical tent, and Erik had never felt a spike of fear like that before in his life. He’d been so sure Charles was dying, was leaving him, and that whatever was between them—it would never_ be _anything._  
  
 _At first it had been unbelievable, a jolting narrative of starts and stops and the physician’s obvious awkwardness, unsure how to tell Erik something so… unbelievable. Eventually bluntness had sufficed: “He’s a bearer who’s been passing,” the man had said, wringing his hands and biting at his lip to the point where it had whitened. “But… I took a blood sample, and he shows signs....”_  
  
 _The man had trailed off, but Erik had pushed, moving in closer; the man had held his ground, though only through sheer force of will: sweat had beaded on his brow and his breath had thinned out. “His blood work shows signs of a fledgling bond. The hormone levels are elevated, indicating that it’s as of yet unconsummated. That’s why the levels are high: his body is driving him to complete it.”_  
  
 _Right then: everything had broken apart and snapped back together differently, rearranging his whole life with an upheaval so violent that it ought to have been horrific—but it could never be horrific. It was perfect. It_ is _perfect._  
  
 _He and Charles sparked a bond._  
  
 _Humming a little, he loosens his hand and threads it back through Charles’ hair, carding through the sweaty strands. His mate needs a proper bath: he’s been cleaned up, had the blood wiped off, but he’s still sweaty from battle. A good bath, a decent meal, a comfortable bed—and the last will double nicely for the bond completion. It will have to happen as soon as possible, obviously._  
  
 _Obviously. Assuming that Charles agrees._  
  
 _Which may not be the case._  
  
 _“It was the other night in the tent, wasn’t it?” Erik murmurs, breaking through the grainy remnants of sweat buried at the roots of Charles’ hair. “When you kissed me. It was then.” And Charles had pulled away. He’d never meant for this to happen._  
  
 _That’s… worth some admiration, actually, and quite a lot of pity besides. It must have been gut-wrenching for Charles, denying what he was all his life, trying so hard to do good, to do right by his people, and of course he thought he had to, because he is_ Charles _, and he appears to have it in his mind that it’s his divine missive to fix everything for everyone. His goals are truly admirable, but whoever taught him that this was the only way he could go about it, by pretending to be something that he’s not, in a position he wasn’t built to have—they deserve to be punished._  
  
 _It will be different now. It will_ have _to be. Shaw is dead, but only after having conquered most of the South—someone will have to take his place. Erik’s lips twitch, just thinking about it: Charles won’t like that. Centralized power: it doesn’t seem such a bad thing so long as it isn’t Shaw running things, but Charles has always railed against the idea. It will be something to talk through when he wakes up, in the coming weeks. The two of them together are obviously the natural choice to take Shaw’s throne, though it will be in a different fashion than everyone thinks: once they find out that Charles’ is a bearer, he won’t be sole ruler of anything, but that’s all right, because he’ll rule in other ways. He’ll be the perfect helpmate: he’s a hell of a lot smarter than Erik when it comes to politics—Charles can effectively run the government within a previously agreed upon structure—the centralized government will stay, despite what Charles would like—and though he’ll have to pass his decisions by Erik, they do want the same things ultimately. They’ll disagree occasionally—Charles is painfully naïve in so many things—but for the most part there’s no reason why it shouldn’t work. The military will be something of an issue—they won’t accept a bearer in military command—but Erik can always consult him behind closed doors. Completely workable—better, even, then ruling separately._  
  
 _They will be a stunning partnership._  
  
 _“You and I,” Erik tells him, dragging his fingers out of his hair and skimming his knuckles down Charles’ cheek. “Darling, I love you so much.”_  
  
 _He does. He never thought he would—never expected to have a mate, but Charles is so much more than anyone else he’s ever met, and… Erik is the luckiest man alive now. To have Charles—everything fate has ever thrown at him, all the pain and the heartbreak, was worth it to reach_ this _. Charles. Calling him “darling”—it’s what his father called his mother, and it never felt right for him to use it with anyone else. But with his mate—his wonderful, spectacular mate, it fits perfectly. Charles_ is _a darling, better and kinder than anyone Erik has ever met._  
  
 _If only he’d wake up, so that they can talk this out. As rose-tinted as everything seems at the moment—Charles is his_ bearer _—there are questions that need to be answered. Why did Charles hide? How will they announce what he actually is? Who will rule as regent over Westchester for the time being? There will be a great deal to think about._  
  
 _And… more than that, seeing Charles so still and pale, bloodless against the white cotton sheets, is unsettling. When Shaw’s sword had sliced through his skin, and he’d gone down—and Charles, amazing man that he is, had held Shaw still while his own side and leg had been gushing blood, holding him steady as Erik had ended it._  
  
 _No surprise that it had been too much—that he’d collapsed right after, scaring the hell out of Erik, who had screamed and screamed for a medic._  
  
 _But that’s… over. He runs a hand through his own hair, breathing out steadily. No need to revisit that. Charles will have a scar on his inner thigh. That’s all. Shaw is dead, and Charles will be fine._  
  
More _than fine. He’ll finally be able to be himself, and surely it will be difficult for him to accept at first, but they can work through it, and Charles will find his place, see that it’s not so bad after all—that he can make just as much of a difference now as he ever did—and—and—they’ll be together._  
  
 _Because Charles is his mate._  
  
 _Gods, it’s unbelievable._  
  
 _“_ You _are unbelievable,” he whispers, leaning over to press a kiss to Charles’ forehead. Skin to skin; he doesn’t pull back._  
  
 _He stays like that for a very long time, simply breathing in Charles scent and knowing_ —knowing _—that there’s never been anyone more blessed than he is right at this moment./_  
  
The memory fades into a reality of warm skin and a leg hooking around the back of his knee, drawing him closer to Erik, which shouldn’t be possible, given that he’s already lying on top of the man. But Erik has always laughed at impossibility, and their bodies do fit better with Erik’s leg between Charles’, hooking up over the back of Charles’ knee and holding him close.  
  
This firmly pressed together, nothing much is left to the imagination, and since neither of them have a knife, that lump poking at Charles’ hip is, no doubt, exactly what he thinks it is, whether or not he’s ready to acknowledge it—and he’s not. Not yet.  
  
“Believe me now?” Erik whispers against Charles’ cheek.  
  
It’s all wildly out of proportion, of course, these things that Erik thinks of him. He was never perfect, and he’s not astounding, and he’s probably a horror to have as a bearer. “You can’t possibly still think I’m an ideal candidate for a mate.” He shifts, creating friction, both at their hips and their chests, which is awkward and sticky and disconcerting, but it’s better than the itching need to be touched that’s blooming between his own legs. He—he’s slick there, and he knows the feeling well enough from nights alone with his own fantasies: if he were to touch, his hand would come away sticky.  
  
Erik only laughs, pushing out a pleasant rumble, and—he never touched the zipper on Charles’ trousers, but it’s undone all the same. Easy enough for Erik’s hands to finally sneak all the way down under Charles’ backside and, with one sharp jerk, to pull Charles more firmly up his body until their groins are perfectly aligned, slotting together in a pocket of heat.  
  
Oh, dear. That’s—it’s really rather good, actually, and his opening is throbbing, he’s getting hard, and, right about now with Moira, he’d be shucking his pants and rolling over on top of her, working his mouth down over his breasts and up her neck, trailing his fingers between her legs, and she might touch his cock, get him ready, and they’d kiss—  
  
“What a fantastic ass you have,” Erik growls, right before—  
  
When Erik flips him over, he doesn’t see it coming.  
  
“I think you’re _exactly_ the ideal candidate for _my_ mate,” Erik tells him, locking his elbows and hovering, though he drops his hips against Charles’, bowing his back. Is that uncomfortable? It _looks_ uncomfortable _._ “I never thought this would be easy. I only thought that you’d be worth it. I haven’t changed my mind.”  
  
That is… it’s impossible not to feel the tiniest bit flattered. He’s been a terror—he knows he has, and Erik wants him anyway. He’s either insane or very stupidly in love. Probably both. And… everyone wants to be loved like that, don’t they? Surely he isn’t so different for liking it, just a little? It’s unhealthy, and he can’t stay here, but—he feels overheated, heady with the knowledge, puffing out breath from between barely parted lips and watching Erik loom over him, lowering himself down, kissing him, on his forehead, on his nose, down to his lips—  
  
Then solid weight on top of him, hands settling on either side of his face, holding him still while he’s kissed— _he_ has never been the one who’s been kissed, not before Erik. He always initiated, had control, but this is surprisingly intoxicating, different from the rush of being the one to cradle and hold a woman. Moira and her tiny waist, held firmly under his hands while he’d borne down into her, when she’d gasped and grabbed his hair, pulling his head down to kiss him—even then, he’d taken over the kiss eventually, always at her prompting.  
  
Feels good like this. Odd, but—he never knew he was this small, that _he_ could be the one held. Never knew that—  
  
A spark of consciousness snaps at his brain, igniting, expanding, racing through his thoughts.  
  
What? No. He hadn’t—he jerks back into the pillow, startled, and looking up at Erik is no help—he’s smiling, satisfied, and then… not.  
  
It takes all of five seconds to realize what’s happened. And that—it’s _more_ than enough.  
  
One: Erik had pushed against the blocks that Charles has maintained so meticulously throughout the last few weeks—the blocks he’d thought he still had up. But he’s a telepath: his natural default is to leave those blocks down, and no one is ever more open than when having sex. It’s simply second nature for him to open his mind during sex, to experience what his partner is experiencing, to mingle and to taste the entirety of the high that two combined minds and bodies give.  
  
Two: the realization that his blocks aren’t up, and that Erik has taken advantage of it, sliding shamelessly into his mind as though he belongs there. He’s warm and overwhelming and impossible to miss, when his mind is humming with pleasure.  
  
Three: his consciousness flexes, wrapping around Charles thoughts and pulling them toward himself to look and examine.  
  
Four: Charles was thinking of Moira.  
  
Five: _fuck._


	19. Chapter 19

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All right, here it is: warnings for the sex part of the evening. Basically, Erik is ridiculous, Charles can't sort his own brain out and is about as reliable a narrator as someone high on drugs, and everything is kind of a mess.

The change is nearly instantaneous: what was before an invigorating mental presence, stimulating his mind with feedback from the heat of both their bodies’ wants, now chills, wrapping around Charles’ thoughts and squeezing, as though it’s trying to strangle the life out of those mental tidbits. Erik is no telepath: he likely has no idea what he’s doing, but gods does it hurt. It hurts _badly_.  
  
“Let go, let go—“ He’s whimpering, like a scared child, but it hurts so much, like ice freezing around his thoughts and expanding, taking up more and more space and choking his mind into a smaller and smaller place. “You’re hurting—it’s hurting—“  
  
It shatters in the space of a few seconds, and Erik is left on his elbows, bracketing Charles, breathing as hard as he ever did after combat—and appearing equally as dangerous. With his pupils blown this wide, there’s almost no color to his eyes, and that, mixed with the deep glower etched into his skin where a generous mouth should be, makes him appear empty, nothing more than rage personified.  
  
“You don’t _ever_ ,” he hisses, lips curling back to bare his teeth, “think of her when you’re with _me_.”  
  
If an answer was expected, Erik allots an impossibly short time for it, diving back down and catching Charles’ mouth, so hard that their teeth click and Charles is driven down deeper into the pillow, hands lurching up to cling to Erik’s shoulders out of sheer reflex. Get the shields back up—he needs to get them up and in place and locked—  
  
His mouth is abruptly abandoned, seconds before teeth sink into his neck, not hard enough to break skin—but he stills, shivering, enduring the pound of his pulse where it’s trapped under Erik’s teeth. “Don’t you dare try to block me out,” Erik snarls against his neck, removing his teeth just long enough to speak before diving back down, locking them back into the indents already pressed into the skin.  
  
Instinct is a funny thing: and it says that when a superior predator has a grip on your jugular, you stop moving, lest your throat be ripped out. But… he strives not to be ruled by instinct, right? And this isn’t pleasant—and Erik said he’d stop if it hurt.  
  
He ought to speak up and tell him that. Talk it out, use his words, like any child over the age of three ought to know how to do, damn it—  
  
He tries to turn over and twist away.  
  
Not surprisingly, all he earns for his efforts is a sharp shake: Erik’s jaw clenching a little tighter, shaking Charles by the bite he has on his neck. It drives his teeth in deeper, straight into the pulse itself where the blood pounds against Erik’s tongue.  
  
Once, as a child, Charles had held a baby bird in his hand, feeling its heart skitter against his fingers, frantic and panicked. Holding life is a powerful feeling, though the one whose life is being held is precisely the opposite. With Erik essentially tasting his life, dabbing his tongue against his pulse, all he can really do is blink hard enough to make his eyes ache, and stare up at the ceiling, thinking, praying.  
  
What if Erik bit down, straight into his neck? He could rip out someone’s throat with his teeth—surely it isn’t _impossible_.  
  
It’s certainly no love bite.  
  
“Stop. _Stop._ ” There: exactly as he was supposed to say—and Erik had promised.  
  
Erik is not so far gone as to have forgotten that: he lets go immediately, pulling back, breathing hard.  
  
Any other time, any other circumstance, and he’d toss words at Erik. It’s what he’s always done before. But, in this case, anger hasn’t made the lust burn any less: Erik’s mouth on his neck is still _Erik’s mouth on his neck_ , whether it’s biting out of anger or not. He still has his hands up on Erik’s shoulders, and while nature inside of him screams in protest, the anger drives him to skid his hands further, down Erik’s back, gripping and bucking up _hard_.  
  
It ought to be hilarious how wide Erik’s eyes go.  
  
It’s not funny. Not at all. It’s _incendiary_.  
  
“Fuck you,” he snarls, digging his nails into Erik’s back and dragging down. Hard.  
  
There will be blood. He can feel it, slick under his fingers, smearing when he moves his hands, until he goes too far and the blood runs out and dries from the friction, leaving his finger pads to drag against the skin. Erik grunts and twists against him, rolling his hips, pressing them together and bumping their hipbones, hard enough to bruise. A glimpse at his eyes—he looks _confused_ , dazed, but his pupils are still blown wide and—  
  
This isn’t how it’s supposed to be.  
  
If he’s scared—is he supposed to be scared? Angry is easier than scared, and infinitely better than being driven on by the horrid instincts that hold his logic in a chokehold. And, if he stops now, that prickling in his eyes is going to spill over into tears.  
  
Angry, then. It isn’t fair, isn’t fair, isn’t fair—  
  
But skin is still skin, there to be touched, to be clawed at, and he can get his fingers in Erik’s hair just as easily now as ever. To hell with it—whatever he wants, he ought to get, right? If Erik is going to make him do this, Charles can damn well call the tune of whatever demented dance they’re tangled up in.  
  
One vicious yank moves Erik back off him: it wouldn’t work if he were pushing Erik away, but he’s actually pulling him closer, down.  
  
“What do you want—?”  
  
Isn’t it obvious? He grinds his head back into the pillows and arches his back, rubbing against the sheets and staining them with tracts of sweat that bead on his back. This bed is hateful.  
  
He never answers in words, just shoving Erik’s face down to his groin, bucking up against Erik until he gets the idea and, accommodating Charles’ hands in his hair, hooks his hands into the obstructing trousers and jerks them down, lifting Charles’ hips with his hands—he’s always been strong, and it’s always been attractive, damn him, _damn him_ —and peeling the trousers off, the last of the wedding outfit, and tossing them heedlessly to the side.  
  
Erik is still wearing his own, of course, but unequal is, at this point, the name of the game.  
  
Patience has left the bed with the trousers: if they wait any longer, he’ll lose his nerve, so just— “Now—“ Get on with it, go, go….  
  
Moira did this once or twice—no, don’t think about it, don’t, stay focused on the wet heat, that sucking, velvet-soft heat—truly amazing. He twists, stretching the muscles running up his sides, hooking a hip against a bed sheet and nearly pulling it loose. He keens like he’s dying, squirming his shoulders, offsetting the need to push up into Erik’s mouth by rerouting the movement to other parts of his body. No one ever told him he’d feel like this. Opening, closing, clenching his hands in Erik’s hair—soft hair, thick hair, and long enough to pull, to guide Erik’s rhythm to his liking.  
  
Oh, oh, he—Erik is _humming_. Bloody hell, what is that? He’d never known it felt like that, like—  
  
Self-control. He has some. Yes. Every want, it can be controlled, full-out undulations smothered into aborted stutters, hardly more than mere twitches of hip. But he can’t close his ears to his own thready gasps and hitching moans any more than he can stop himself from hearing the indecency of Erik’s wet noises. Those hands on his hips, thumbs slotting into the groove above his hipbones, nature’s way of offering a handle by which to hold him down. And Erik hands are webs, spreading out over him and sticking, wrapping him up and trapping him—but always secure. Damp, though, at the moment, between the two of them, sweating as they are.  
  
So good—beyond good—  
  
Pull off—going to come, and it’s—he’s still a decent human. He’s doing this, but he’s a decent person, and he’s not going to come in someone’s mouth—not without permission. “Get off—“ Another high whine, vibrating up into his nose, as he tries to wrench Erik off of him by his hair, seconds before he comes—and is ignored. He comes hard down Erik’s throat with so much shaking that his fingers spasm open and he lets Erik go, too preoccupied with vibrating out the pressurizing emotions in his chest. Leaking energy, hemorrhaging at first, but settling, sinking down, calming….  
  
In the after, everything is still.  
  
If he could bear anything beyond lying back in the sheets and closing his eyes, he might try it, but he can’t look at Erik, not even when he can feel the other man panting against his thigh, very loud in the otherwise silent room. His breath is moist, creating condensation on Charles’ leg, which could be grounds for protest, though… not really. What’s going to happen is so much more invasive than _that_.  
  
It’s supposed to hurt less if he’s relaxed, right?  
  
Good: he feels very relaxed indeed. Drifting in a world of silk and brittle ache, with Erik’s thumb stroking his hip, soft and slow, soothing, as he can afford to be _after_ a fight. Erik can afford everything now, when he knows what he’s about to get. Surely he won’t wait too long.  
  
Please, don’t wait too long. If Erik waits, if there is time to think in between….  
  
But Erik… cares, and that complicates things. He’ll try to ease this, make it good, without realizing that’s worse: it would mean feeling in a way that’s connected with the bright memories that shouldn’t have to be tainted. Or—he might have wanted those memories if this had kept up like it started, with Erik being gentle, before the thoughts of Moira had derailed everything.  
  
No. Shields—oh, he’s put them up. That—maybe that’s why it hurt so much. Like having sex with someone he can’t really feel. Of course it felt empty and angry. No one is there on the other side. It’s so grounded in the physical—the perfect anonymous sex: the kind he’s never had. He’s only ever slept with one person before Erik, and without the connection, it’s—why would people do this willingly? It’s horrid, empty—even a one-off couldn’t be like this. People can share aspects of themselves through that, but, since he’s closed his shields, he hasn’t shared anything at all with Erik: the person touching him could be anyone, and he’d never know the difference when he can’t sense any thoughts.  
  
The only thing worse than not feeling Erik’s mind would be _feeling_ it.  
  
All right… he’s all right, and he can coax Erik into this next part with minimal damage to himself. He won’t have to feel anything if he doesn’t want to, if he does it this way. Better like this, under his own power, than to have it forced on him later. He can cope. He _will_ cope.  
  
“C’mon,” he whispers, as blandly as he can. Once again, he tangles his fingers into Erik’s hair, this time smoothing out the knots woven in by his tugging. Not so bad, stroking like this, just a little pull, which Erik obeys—rather like a lost boy, coming to hand—with surprising alacrity, crawling up the bed to settle over the top of Charles. As a solidly built man, he’s heavy, pressing in on Charles’ lungs and compressing them into the depth of his chest, though never so much that breathing was ever in question. He’s careful about it, planting his elbows down into the mattress in order to take most of his weight.  
  
“I’m sorry,” Erik murmurs. “This is hard for you, I know. My anger was misplaced.”  
  
It’s a little late. It’s already happened. Does he think he can make this acceptable _now?_  
  
He does _try_ , gingerly kissing Charles’ cheek, almost chastely. “I understand that you need to grieve.”  
  
No, he doesn’t understand that. He may think he does, but he can’t possibly comprehend the situation, what it was like when he received the news, walked into that room to see Moira laid out in the sick bed, and then the days after when she slowly wasted away. Or maybe it’s only easier to think that: easier to feel misunderstood. Either way, he’ll never understand how it felt to see a good, strong woman waste away. Moira was more than her role as his wife: Erik may not have arranged her death directly, but his actions set Raven on a path to deprive the world of a person that was exactly the sort it needs.  
  
“I told you earlier today that once it was only us, alone, that it would be better. I—things were going all right, weren’t they?” Uncertainty is rather a good look for him, though empathy would be even better.  
  
Whatever makes this easier; the waiting is bad enough: “Look sharp, hmm?” he murmurs, still languid, eyes half-mast, as he cups Erik’s face: he runs his thumb over Erik’s cheekbone, watching the other man smile into the touch, a softness in his eyes that’s new. But only one of them is smiling. Affection doesn’t change that, and it’s out of place in the cold space under Charles’ ribs. “I’m ready. Get on with it, but don’t pretend this is romantic—“  
  
Erik turns into the touch, kissing his palm. “I have an idea, if you’ll hear me out.”  
  
“It’s not as though I have anywhere to go.”  
  
To Erik’s credit, he’s intelligent enough not to bite back with insults: he keeps his mouth busy, dragging it up Charles’ wrist—the one without a bandage, and, gods, _don’t_ think of that—open-mouthed and a little wet, dabbing with his tongue the higher he gets, until he’s mouthing at the crook of Charles’ elbow.  
  
When he does pull back, it’s barely any distance at all, but only enough to level his stare upward and to pin Charles down with his gaze. It’s odd like this, when his eyes are half obscured by his lashes, sweeping down and fanning over that blue-green color. “It’s not only about completing the bond, you know,” he admits quietly. “I want _you_.”  
  
And why not? That’s an easy thing to say when Erik is getting everything he’s after all in one go. How lovely it must be, to be so spoiled by luck. “I want you. I want you in every way I can have you, and, yes, in order to complete the bond, that means penetrative sex with you on the receiving end. But, Charles—“ He dips his head, breathing out over the skin of Charles’ elbow, leaving gooseflesh in the aftermath. “I want this to be enjoyable.”  
  
If Erik has a proposition, he might as well make it: this prelude is hardly necessary, and the heat radiating off him is distracting enough that, if they wait much longer, anything Erik says will be lost in a haze of that distraction. “I know sex can be enjoyable,” he snaps, but… he doesn’t pull his arm away from Erik. “I’ve done it before, or has it escaped your notice that David resembles me in a number of ways—?”  
  
Snark is evidentially not what Erik is after: he bites down lightly, sliding his chest against Charles’ side in a slow glide that smears them together. As he pushes, his toes grind down into the mattress, legs tensing and drawing Charles’ eye to the shift of those muscles. Whatever else Erik is, he’s a fine physical specimen, right from the top of his head down to those toes.  
  
When Erik lets go again, it’s with a soft smile, tainted by self-satisfaction. “You know _sex_ can be good, but you don’t know how good sex with _me_ can be.”  
  
Oh, for godsake. Erik might as well whip his dick out and have a good crow about it while he’s at it, yes? “I don’t trust that—“  
  
“I know. I know you don’t trust me. I _know_ you’re scared. You think you’re powerless. But you’re wrong. This: sex—believe me when I say you will never have more power over another person than you have over me right this moment. I would move Heaven and Earth to make this enjoyable for you. Let me prove it—let me prove that this isn’t mechanics, isn’t just a bond driving for completion.”  
  
If it were only the bond—if it were _only_ the bond, Erik’s company wouldn’t matter for anything, and they never would have become friends first. And what is a bond, but a more intense version of human hormones? That attraction—it’s natural. To want the slick slide of Erik’s skin, sheened and gleaming with sweat, and the naturally sweet way that he moves, chocked full of affection when he kisses Charles on the forehead, or the burn of it when he tries for more intimacy: a kiss on the mouth, down lower, to neck and chest, abdomen, groin. They’ll get there eventually, and Erik will learn every inch of him.  
  
But, for now, there’s Erik’s regard, and his half-ready movement: Erik hangs back, not quite pressing forward yet, but with tension in his upper half as he holds in his motion. His muscles remain taut, coiled and waiting, and it’s not as though Charles has the self-control of a saint: Erik’s abdomen could have been formed by a sculptor, and his waist practically begs to be framed by a lover’s hands.  
  
Cupping his hand into the curve of Erik’s side is dangerous, patently foolish—but the heat of the skin radiates into his palm, and he holds on, breathing, and matching himself to the rise and fall of Erik’s chest.  
  
Foolish. But so good. So _much_.  
  
Despite serious objection from his higher brain functions, the movement drains the life out of his limbs. All that’s left is looking, seeing… Erik. Erik, looking back at him as though the sun rises and sets on Charles Xavier alone, as though Erik has never wanted anything more in his life than he wants _this_. The situation rips through the meaning of that, but the shreds tangle Charles up just the same, pulling him down into a mess and holding him there.  
  
“And how—“ His voice cracks, and he swallows, licking his lips. “And how do you propose to show that to me?”  
  
It can’t be done, surely.  
  
But… the last time Charles saw someone’s eyes shine so brightly, it denoted fever. And Erik—he looks half mad, crawling upward over Charles’ body, perching on hands and knees, and angling their bodies close together, so very close: the tips of their noses nearly touch, and Erik’s knees bracket either side of Charles’ legs.  
  
“Fuck _me_ ,” Erik murmurs, licking his own lips and staring at Charles’ mouth instead. But when he _does_ look up—a shot to the brain would be easier to bear. All that _intensity_ , hiding in the dilation of Erik’s pupils. They’re blown-out, lust-sick. “I want you to understand that you own _me_ just as much as I own _you_. This isn’t about me owning your body. If it were about that, I could have had you days ago. I want _this—_ I want _you,_ and I want you to understand the kind of power that gives you.”  
  
Fuck.  
  
Literally.  
  
Erik can’t—he can’t—guardians don’t take it up the ass, not in a world where reproduction is everything. If anyone found out that Erik let him do that...  
  
It wouldn’t matter.  
  
It wouldn’t _matter_ , because Erik is king, and no one would dare to question him. That’s assuming anyone would believe a bearer’s claims in the first place. A war prisoner, unwillingly married—and his accusations are supposed to be taken seriously? He could shout his claims in the central square. No one would hear him.  
  
How’s _that_ for power?  
  
But… for Erik to put himself in that position—it does indicate rather a lot of trust, when it could so easily hurt. Sex is vulnerable. Being penetrated can _damage_. And Erik is willing to risk…  
  
Nothing. What is he really risking, in the scheme of things? Anytime things get to be too much, he can stop them. He’ll never have to worry about whether “no” is an option.  
  
But. _But…_  
  
Not one in a hundred guardians would ever consent to what Erik has just offered.  
  
The rasp of lips on his cheek jerks Charles out of his thoughts, and he twists, arching up under Erik, though not enough to slot their hips together—and the thought has him pushing back down, gluing his backside to the bed. Erik’s right: silk sheets would have been a nightmare, and the way the cotton sucks the moisture off his back is a blessing.  
  
Blessings, though, are so often curses in disguise: it would be smarter to push Erik for answers, but what comes out instead is: “We don’t have anything for it.” Bearers lubricate, but Erik—Erik is only a man. He wasn’t made for this. Lucky bastard never had to worry about his body betraying him, readying him for the use of someone who hasn’t been given permission.  
  
But Erik only hums pleasantly, dropping another sweet, almost chaste kiss to Charles’ cheek, before planting his hands on the bed and sliding backward, down off Charles body. Once he rolls off onto the sheets, he tips sideways, fumbling upward to the chest of drawers at the side of the bed. One quick yank and the drawer opens on squeaking runners, protesting the sudden use.  
  
“Lube is a handy thing to have in a bedroom,” he says in response to Charles’ questioning tip of his head. “I take it you haven’t explored the drawers.”  
  
No. He should have, but… call it blind faith, the certainty that Erik wouldn’t put anything into a bedside table that could be used for any purpose Charles might consider helpful. That sounds a damn sight better than simply admitting that he hadn’t wanted to go near enough to the bed to explore the side tables. He isn’t scared of the _furniture._ He’s _not._  
  
When it’s clear that an answer isn’t forthcoming, Erik’s mouth curls up into a small smile, and he nods toward his hand, where he’s holding out the tube in Charles’ direction. “Go on, then.”  
  
And do what? Casually finger Erik open, simple as you please? It doesn’t seem… right. But the ripple of Erik’s muscle under his skin, low in his back—there’s always been the desire to touch, and it doesn’t burn any less brightly now.  
  
A little shakily, he reaches out and tugs the lube out of Erik’s hand, into his own.  
  
A person could impale himself on the sharpness of Erik’s smile.  
  
Equally true: it would be terribly easy to wrap up in the sight of Erik shedding his clothing. One button popped, a zipper tugged down, one shoulder shrugging out of a sleeve and dropping the fabric to the bed… there’s a sinuous flow to it, and it lulls the rest of the room into a state of trance…  
  
Until Erik jerks, dragging an arm free, cutting up the picture with the choppiness of his motion.  
  
And it’s absurd, but everything is sweaty, and the bottle of lube is damp, and—so are his eyes, when he looks away from Erik.  
  
Don’t think about it.  
  
The principle of this isn’t all that different from a woman, right? Beyond the need for more preparation. And Erik doesn’t appear particularly nervous, turning over gracefully enough, and cradling himself down onto the mattress. When that’s not precisely perfect, he angles his elbows up and digs them down into the pillow, holding himself steady. And—oh, that’s a sight, Erik slipping a pillow under his own hips and angling himself up, putting that ass on display.  
  
Steady. This is… not so strange, all things considered. Erik will do this to him later, and there’s nothing biological that precludes turnabout. Only, there’s a hint of unsteadiness to it—a strange, backward wrongness that colors the act of reaching out, and makes beginning altogether too difficult.  
  
But Erik is… very beautiful.  
  
Shuffling his knees forward until he’s closer to Erik—no, _not_ a good idea, to lift his arm, stretching it out…  
  
It’s a brief touch to begin, brushing his fingers down the dip of Erik’s back, trailing lightly over the swell of his ass. It’s wrapped in a hint of surprise: Erik shivers, skin twitching, and there’s the absurd desire to make a comparison to a horse trying to flick a fly off its skin. But Erik settles soon enough, arching his back up to push fully into the palm of the hand against his ass. This shouldn’t be so sweet, touching like that, learning the slightly seasoned texture of Erik’s skin, not so fair as Charles’ own.  
  
“I—“  
  
“You’re all right, Charles. Go on.”  
  
“Have you done this before?”  
  
“Let another man bugger me? No. But I’ve done it to others: I know how it works well enough.”  
  
How it works? It _doesn’t_ work. Men get cold and lonely at night out in the field, and sharing sheets with each other isn’t unheard of, but it’s never anything more than a quick release of tension. An actual relationship between two guardians is out of the question. Two non-bearing, non-fertile men? Fine. But never would there have been any cause for someone to be fucking Erik with any regularity. And, if what Erik says is true, he hasn’t bothered with that anyway.  
  
No shock there: of course Erik likes to be on top. That’s how it works for a guardian: damned Mother Nature again, trying to perpetuate the species. Same is true of a bearer: put him in bed with a guardian, and he’ll probably favor playing the bottom. It isn’t a biological imperative in the sense that he _can’t_ top, but—he’s made to be fucked, isn’t he? Being in bed with a guardian ought to bring that out.  
  
That’s not an especially good line of thinking when he’s uncapping lube and spreading it over his fingers.  
  
But… it may not be fully incorrect. That sense of wrongness has yet to dissipate.  
  
“When you thought I was a guardian, was this what you had in mind?”  
  
Erik’s soft chuckle is half lost against the pillow, but he does the courtesy of raising his head enough that his next words are more audible, slipping out of the side of his mouth and drifting back over his shoulder toward Charles: “I hadn’t thought this far along, to be honest.”  
  
No, and he can’t have thought _this_ through either, or he’d never have offered. But… he isn’t acting overly bothered, though Charles crowds up close, the fingers of his right hand slippery. He props his clean hand on Erik’s side, digging his nails into the flesh, and skidding his hand forward, dancing over Erik’s ribs. He’s thin there, almost too thin, although the heft of him in total is enough to deter any real worry.  
  
“Beautiful skin,” he whispers. Not perfect—rougher than his own, and without the creamy complexion, but it matches Erik’s personality perfectly. Does it taste—? Yes, it does, and one kiss turns into a slight lick, all of it pressed into the line of Erik’s back where the sweat gathers. “Gods.”  
  
What is he _doing_?  
  
But—the ripple of Erik’s muscles when he shifts is—that’s a sight, the kind that addicts. Completely entrancing. And—Charles stretches out, hovering his fingers over Erik’s hair. Erik must sense it: he leans back a few inches, bumping his head into them and sighing, almost muttering when Charles begins to stroke, tugging his fingers through the surprisingly soft strands.  
  
Just touch, and touch a little more.  
  
Staying steady for too long is beyond the realm of possibility, though, and after a few strokes he trails his fingers down the nape of Erik’s neck, thinning his touch out to one finger only when he draws it down Erik’s spine, bump after bump. Someday soon, maybe he’ll try this with his tongue, if Erik is willing to oblige. Current evidence would indicate that he would be.  
  
The problem with the trail he’s currently taking is its ending: his finger, once it’s drawn the length of Erik’s spine, ends up poised directly over the crease of Erik’s backside.  
  
Trying not to infuse his motion with the uncertainty he’s feeling, he switches hands, replacing his clean hand with the slicked one.  
  
“I’m going to—“  
  
The answers comes in the form of an undulation of Erik’s hips, and that finger, slick as it is, slips down into Erik’s crack, sliding over Erik’s hole. It spasms under the touch, but Erik says nothing, only humming a little and twitching his hips again.  
  
All right. This is happening. It’s happening, and it’s fine, and all those times he fantasized about Erik at night in their tent, what exactly did he think would happen?  
  
The answer? Erik would play top, of course: _that_ was always the theme of the fantasies, but… this is important, and not just as sex. That Erik is letting him do this—it _matters_. He’d be a fool to turn it down. And, if it feels a little off, that’s nothing compared to the picture it makes: Erik, spread out on the bed, fingers digging down into the mattress, hips canted up, hair mussed from the touches.  
  
So: nudge forward, wiggle the tip of his finger into that tight heat, and— _oh_.  
  
That’s… very odd. Odd, but good, when Erik clenches around him, waving his emotion down through his muscles in a fluid rise and fall that dips his shoulders up and down and spreads his legs a little wider, rumpling the sheets. By this point, the comforter is well and truly smushed up at the bottom of the bed.  
  
“All right?”  
  
Erik’s chuckle is almost lost in the pillow, but he does lift his head to answer: “Put your finger all the way in, Love. You won’t get anywhere with what you’re doing now.”  
  
He’s right. This needs to go further: one more nudge sinks his finger in up to the first knuckle, deeper, and—wiggling it, trying to stretch the tension of the muscles. There’s a strain at first—Erik grunting—but before long the muscles give and tremble, loosening little by little.  
  
It should be good. It should be perfect. After everything Erik has done today, having the opportunity to finally scrape together some semblance of control ought to feel like salvation. Instead—Erik is beautiful, wonderfully attractive, but—  
  
This feels cold.  
  
There had been a heat, when Erik was… leading. Damn it, that’s—those kind of thoughts—Erik fucking _branded_ him, and past events—fuck—there’s love, but it doesn’t make things right. Erik is _controlling,_ not leading. No, but that—it has that same kind of heat. This isn’t right, thinking that it’s all right, that Erik is desirable. This isn’t—that can be so simple, not with the circumstances. Love doesn’t mean _this_ , does it?  
  
Lie back and take it? Why does that thought fuzz the better part of logic? It isn’t clear, not now and not before, but, hand on Erik’s side, stretching him open slowly and carefully—it starts him shivering.  
  
Gods, pull away, pull _away_. There’s a tug in his brain, and in his chest, his hands, nudging him forward, and it doesn’t want him touching _Erik_. Just roll over, it says, finish this up, let Erik climb on top.  
  
No. Listening— _don’t_ listen. Instead… disengage entirely. No, no—that hurts, the prospect hurts, and—there’s a tiny jolt, shock-like, toward the front of his skull.  
  
Keep touching.  
  
And breathe. Please keep breathing, and don’t roll over. If this has to happen, then take what Erik is offering, and peel away from him later.  
  
What _is_ this?  
  
Why can’t he—he chokes, swallowing down a breath. This was supposed to be simple: him, lifeless, as Erik fucked him—he’d _promised_ , not to give Erik anything beyond the physical tonight—but instead the memories happened, and—things are blurring. This isn’t _him_. This _can’t_ be him.  
  
If he is truly this weak….  
  
“Good, Darling, go on,” Erik pants, face half on the pillow, tipped to the side.  
  
 _Wrong_ the tightness in his chest says. But doable, when compared with stopping altogether. Impossible, that. And separating Erik from the sex? The height of impossibility. Fuck, how did things creep along to this point? It had been—he’d been scared, wanted it to be easier, yes? There were the memories, and letting Erik touch, and _how did it get so tangled?_  
  
Coward.  
  
And… the body heat, Erik’s scent….  
  
This isn’t working. Whatever this is—it’s mostly the last vestiges of the best of all bad ideas, but, in this moment, it’s the height of possible protest when his body locks up at the idea of stopping altogether, of blocking Erik out. That was supposed to be possible, this idea of detaching. Why isn’t it? If the best that can be hoped for is no better than locking up at the prospect of fucking Erik—well, that’s really only fear, isn’t it? Not real resistance.  
  
No, that isn’t fair. Fighting isn’t so easy as all that….  
  
Right: breathe. Now that Erik has loosened enough that it’s no longer akin to being hugged by wet heat—time to pull back, press his first two fingers together, and to stop _thinking_. His free hand presses onto Erik’s back, planting down on his left side for leverage, allowing him to lean forward and put his weight onto Erik as he works the second finger in.  
  
Erik is tight. This _must_ hurt, but Erik says nothing, and though he’s begun to sweat more than before, he’s calm. “I don’t—“  
  
“Crook your fingers. Feel around, see if you can find—“  
  
A prostate, yes. And by the way Erik’s voice chokes out and shifts to a drawn-out groan, there’s a good chance he’s found it. Right on course, there’s a good chap. Massaging at it with his fingertip—and _there_ Erik goes, hips jumping to meet the touch, and fingers digging down into the pillow so frantically that the cloth thins in protest and Erik’s knuckles stretch to whiteness.  
  
Keep. Breathing.  
  
“Add another finger,” Erik suggests once he has his voice back—takes a few minutes—and, even then, it’s strained.  
  
It’s good to know things won’t be this difficult when Erik tops _him_ : his own experimentation has taught him well enough that he opens fairly easily, much like Moira did for _him_. But it had been different, then. He’d… been afraid of hurting her, so much so that, when they finally reached the point of actual penetration, she’d ridden _him_ , setting her own pace and dragging him along after _._  
  
That had been the first time he’d really had cause to discover how quick that wetness rushes up. And that rush—that would explain why there’s a dampness between his own legs at the sight of Erik presented like this. And, yes, his cock is beginning to stir to life, possibly taking some interest in these proceedings.  
  
Three fingers. “All right?”  
  
Erik grunts. But: “Yes. Twist them.” He does, and Erik hisses, curling his toes and driving them into the sheets and through to the mattress. The fabric twists around his toes, more violently than the first time, pulling into bunches. They’ll have wrecked the bed by the time the night is through.  
  
Good. Let them tear the whole room apart tpp.  
  
But—for _now_ …  
  
He opens Erik up for a few minutes more, until Erik’s breathing has picked up, and he’s canting his hips to meet the fingers inside of him. He’s not loose, exactly, but he’s better than he was, and it doesn’t smack of lies when he issues an instruction to get on with it. His voice is too heavy with breath for it be completely a lie, and there’s a handsome flush creeping up his back.  
  
Clearly, he’s not unaffected.  
  
“Slick yourself up.”  
  
“I _know_.”  
  
Just because he’s never fucked a man before—honestly, he’s not so ignorant as _that_.  
  
It’s a dangerous thing, taking himself in hand. He’s already mostly hard, but the touch—any touch, even his own touch—prompts him fully to life, and while he’s no adolescent, prone to finishing early, this is a little more involved than—this—it’s more than he wants to _feel_ at the prospect of sex with Erik. As… _off_ as this might be, his cock evidently has fewer misgivings than his brain.  
  
Fewer still when he lines himself up, one hand braced on Erik’s side.  
  
It’s wrong. It’s so, so wrong, but the shivers don’t stop, and closing his eyes helps. The prospect of pulling back hooks deep inside him and drags through his guts, tearing him up. There’s no stopping.  
  
Right. Breathe. Keep on breathing: it’ll be fine. It’ll be grand, and this is fine, this is easy.  
  
Buck forward—just a little: he sinks the head of his cock into Erik’s heat.  
  
Bloody hell. That is—is—that is beyond description. Tight, hot, but not the sum of those things, and not any less, but _more_ , always more. Sinking another inch or so—of course he has to, when Erik clenches, sucking him in, and—how embarrassing, that was a whimper, of all things.  
  
Oh, but—that’s really quite astounding. That’s—  
  
A bit further, deeper, deeper—  
  
And then there, yes, all the way.  
  
He’s fully inside Erik. One hand on either side of Erik’s waist, and his cock balls deep in Erik’s ass. It’s a sucking heat—he leans forward, keening into Erik’s neck, mouthing at the skin, at the droplets of sweat on his neck. Erik’s muscles are massaging him from the inside, terrifying—how—he. Can’t. Think. Not like this.  
  
“Erik…”  
  
Erik is panting too, and he’s tensed, folding his knees up under himself and lifting the both of them up higher, pushing Charles’ thighs flush against the back of his own. His lower legs bracket Charles’ knees where he kneels in between Erik’s legs.  
  
“Go on,” Erik pants out. “It’s—s’alright, Charles, go ahead.”  
  
As though it’s that easy. As though—he doesn’t want to _hurt—_ doesn’t want to hurt Erik. But looking, seeing himself disappearing into Erik’s body, where they’re joined together— _wrong_ —but there was never any question: he can’t hold out forever.  
  
The first thrust pitches them both forward, and it’s only Erik’s braced forearms that hold them both up off the mattress. Again, though, and again and again and again until he’s rocking into Erik, draped over his back, arms locked around Erik’s waist and holding on. With every thrust, Erik’s stomach ripples under his hand, not flinching, but curling into his palms and pushing every bit of their bodies into contact.  
  
They move together, totally in sync, one roll of hips after another, and even their breathing links up: when Charles deteriorates to pained little whines, Erik waits and matches him, squeezing his inner muscles at any hint of sound. It’s good—it’s fantastic—it’s his teeth in the meat of Erik’s shoulder, and Erik leg’s clenching on either side of his, the two of them puzzled together.  
  
It doesn’t last long. Erik, here, letting him fuck him, and not having had anyone in so long—not since—not since Moira died—not since—  
  
Moaning, he comes, emptying himself into Erik’s ass.  
  
“Erik—Erik—“  
  
Oh. _Oh_  
  
All the energy strains out of the air, oozing down and away, and dripping off to wait for heartbeats to slow and muscles to unclench.  
  
That says nothing for the heart: that’s too knotted to make sense of, and it will stay that way for now, padded and wrapped into the cushion of wrongness that permeates what they’ve just done.  
  
But it was for the best. What Erik was offering couldn’t be turned down.  
  
Now, though: move away, right? They both teeter, and—there’s no holding now, when they both give way, Charles’ flopping down onto Erik and smacking, damp skin on damp skin, into his back. Erik crumples too, and they both plummet downward, collapsing to the bed with enough force to send them bouncing. Sheets and skin, and their faces half in both—and Erik is sucking in lungfulls of air, which surely can’t be made easier by Charles’ weight. Moving, though—that’s hard. If only his limbs were less like jelly, more like—  
  
Oh, gods. He squeaks—positively squeaks—when Erik rolls to the side, slipping Charles’ cock out of himself.  
  
But Erik hasn’t come.  
  
No. That much is obvious. His cock is fully erect, standing proudly up toward his stomach, and a touch purple with the frustration of not getting off. Oh, that isn’t proper etiquette at all, not helping Erik, but—  
  
One look from Erik quells any attempts at movement.  
  
Through half-lidded eyes—now that the lethargy has set in, it’s proving tricky to break away from it—he watches Erik tip to the side, resting his weight on his hip and reaching forward, and—oh, that’s nice: he brushes Charles’ hair back out of his eyes. The look on his face—is Erik capable of it? It’s too sweet, captivated, nothing short of besotted.  
  
And it’s directed at _Charles_.  
  
“What a treasure you are,” he murmurs, running fingertips over Charles’ newly exposed brow. And because Charles is so sluggish—easier to pretend that’s all it is—he bumps his head upward into the touch, smiling drowsily at Erik.  
  
No. Why is he—that isn’t right. He shouldn’t be doing that. Erik is—Erik is—  
  
Do. Not. Panic.  
  
Think logically. No nuzzling—no matter what his body is crying out for—but perhaps some etiquette. Manners are manners… and Erik has done something quite spectacular for him, and, yes, all right, there’s something very daunting in taking Erik’s cock in hand, but it’s a poor bed partner who won’t reciprocate. That isn’t—does he have a right to refuse to help, since he’s taken something from Erik? Refusal seems cruel, and everything is clouding, going fuzzy around the edges.  
  
He nods in the direction of Erik’s cock. “Want me to—?”  
  
Apparently not: Erik leans down and brushes a kiss to his forehead. “No, _Liebling._ Just roll over. There, like that, perfect—“ As though he isn’t guiding Charles onto his back and cradling his head against the pillows. As though Charles is doing it himself, committing a motion that’s worthy of praise.  
  
But—  
  
But what—?  
  
“Was it—was it all right?”  
  
“It was perfect, Darling. Very good. Now relax—back like that, there you are.”  
  
With one quick pat to Charles’ hip, Erik retreats backward with a slow, fluid slink. After what they’ve done, he _must_ be sore, but Erik _is_ a master at hiding his pain and keeping his weakness under wraps: it’s little wonder that he does it now too. There really is no sign of any pain: he backs down the bed, settling himself between Charles’ legs with every indication of ease.  
  
No.  
  
Too much. Too fast. He snaps his legs closed, more in reflex than any conscious thought. Erik is—what _is_ he doing? Setting himself up for—oh. Right. This was—it was never supposed to end with _only_ fucking Erik.  
  
Of course.  
  
Erik doesn’t need any help getting off. He’s about to take care of that all on his own, and all he needs is… at the crux of it, it’s mostly a matter of lying still and allowing Erik to do as he pleases. So, yes, lie back, relax—or at least lie back, don’t impede, and things will—surely they won’t take too long?  
  
Gods, though, it’s impossible to ignore the trickle of cum down Erik’s thigh, the flush blooming on his face. If he’d come, he’d be lying prone too, and not up between Charles’ legs, ready to have a go.  
  
Worse than thinking on that, though, is—everything, it’s so difficult to _think_.  
  
Gods, what is _happening_?  
  
“I don’t—“ he tries to say, but it catches in his throat, and his eyes lock instead on Erik’s cock. That’s supposed to go inside him. Erik is undeniably well-endowed, not to the point of being unusual, but definitely on the larger end of the spectrum.  
  
And he’s going to—going to—  
  
So much for the afterglow. That grogginess is wearing off, replaced by an increasing heat and pull.  
  
“Spread for me,” Erik tells him, ducking his head down and planting a kiss on the inside of Charles’ knee. Not satisfied with only that, he kisses higher, sucking open-mouthed kisses up the inside of Charles’ thigh, scattering little marks—a few directly over the scar left from Shaw—and creeping nearer and nearer to Charles’ cock with each movement.  
  
And that is… potentially problematic. Or: very. Climaxing once doesn’t mean—it doesn’t preclude another go… because, spent or not, Charles isn’t _that_ old. After two times already, it ought to damn well be a badge of honor that he’s showing interest, mild as it might be. It will take a few minutes, but at twenty-nine—plenty of leeway for recovery time. Or—is this biological? “Is that necessary? You’re—oh, you’re—“  
  
Erik turns his face, rubbing his stubble against the sensitive flesh under him. Charles’ thigh, as it turns out. “I want you to enjoy this.” That drag and burn is inciting—ticklish, but no kind of tickling ever did things this good to his nerves before.  
  
“Just—just _do_ it.”  
  
One more kiss, and Erik sighs, licking the skin shamelessly. “Being fucked should never be a chore, Darling. You ought to enjoy it.”  
  
Enjoy it? How? This—what they’re about to do, if there’s a baby, how enjoyable will _that_ be? When the misery sets in, will it be worth it to remember _this_? Erik’s clever hands, and the look he’s wearing now, watching Charles while he sneaks his hand forward, testing how near he can get before the trembling starts.  
  
“You’re so wet,” he says—and someone may as well have smacked him over the head, as surprised as he looks, as… _pleased_ as he looks. Well, no, he wouldn’t look pleased if someone hit him over the head. Wrong metaphor. Is it a metaphor? Gods, Erik is closer now, lighting up nerves, closer—and… he never quite understood the throbbing in that little hidden spot that leads up inside him—that ache to be filled, even with Moi—  
  
No.  
  
He will say he wants to be filled and leave it at that.  
  
“You’ll tell me if anything hurts?”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
Lie: lie and lie and lie, to Erik, to everyone, to himself, if it that’s what it takes.  
  
One more honest smile, before Erik’s fingers dip down, sliding past Charles’ spent cock with a brush to it that draws out a shudder, and— _oh_. That—what Erik is doing, teasing just against the outside of his hole—it tickles: Charles’ hips jump to the touch, and his breath snags. How very wide his eyes must be. But… he hadn’t known it would feel like _that_. Like a live wire pressed up inside him, not pleasant, in the lazy Sunday mourning cup of tea sense of the word, but _amazing_ , like racing at a breakneck speed. It’s that moment where an opponent asks for mercy. It’s the edge of insanity, and the rush that pours over logic, washing it away.  
  
“Good?” Erik drawls, pleased, eyes lazy-lidded, only half open.  
  
He moans softly and twitches his hips. Yes. Very good. If he’d press a little harder—yes, there.  
  
The first finger that slides up inside him prompts him to grind into it, experimenting with sensation, with how it will feel to rub himself against something out of his control that’s inside his body. Good, though, with a kind of wet sucking heat that he’s never experienced. That’s his body. It never really seemed like his before. Just something that was there, not to be used for anything more than an occasional touch in the dark when he was on his own and lonely.  
  
“More?”  
  
He nods, forcing himself to meet Erik’s gaze as Erik pushes in a second finger. His eyes are honest: Erik appears genuinely concerned, watching him with a dedication that is, frankly, endearing—or would be, to an unbiased participant, and… perhaps to Charles as well. He closes his eyes, breathing in through his nose before looking back down: yes, perhaps it _is_ endearing to him too, though vaguely.  
  
And _insane_. Shake it off—try to fight it…  
  
Something crumples.  
  
Breathing out, he closes his eyes and inhales, drawing in Erik’s scent, heavy as it is with arousal.  
  
Nice that, at any sign of discomfort, Erik stops, watching Charles shift and accommodate and settle his shoulders more firmly into the bed, bowing his back in order to elevate his hips. With the manner of single-minded concentration that he excels in, Erik watches, waits, scattering kisses over Charles’ hips and up to his stomach, only starting back up with his fingers when Charles is situated, comfortable enough that his stomach muscles—while he’s thin, he’s soft, unlike Erik’s lean, hard muscle—have begun quivering under Erik’s mouth.  
  
Even then, Erik is made of patience, to the point where he’s seemingly content to work Charles open for minutes at a time: minutes in which Erik contents himself with two fingers, scissoring them, stroking them against Charles’ inner walls and exploring him from the inside, careful to keep his nails from scraping anything sensitive. All throughout, he remains kneeling between Charles’ legs, free hand on Charles’ right thigh for balance, flexing his fingers every so often and leaning down to kiss at whatever patches of skin he can reach. Inner knee, inner thigh, stomach—he starts up something of a cycle, working his way over them all, and smiling into the skin when Charles quivers and shivers against his mouth.  
  
Like lightning, skipping from nerve to nerve, working his heart toward a frantic beat, until he squirms and twists, clambering for more, to get away from what’s too much—and diving back, because not having is so much worse than enduring more than he can handle.  
  
Let him do this, then—keep it up. Anything else—it will be worse, if the patience has run out: something faster, harder, something where he has no choice at all. For now—there’s pleasure, satisfaction—better, surely, than not feeling those things. Guiltier, though, and dirtily complicit, curling his toes, pushing himself up into Erik’s mouth over and over and over until his skin his slick with spit where Erik’s been. Gods, he’s getting off on this.  
  
He really _is._  
  
When Erik does add the third finger, it doesn’t hurt beyond a mild burn and a light pull. No reason it should: he’s built for this. His body is made to take a cock, to accept pregnancy. It’s said to sometimes hurt the first time—the gossiping when he’d been younger. But—  
  
 _“Oh.”_  
  
—maidenhead, or so the term goes—it must have broken years ago, courtesy of the active lifestyle he’s always lead. Riding and running, sword fighting, climbing trees….  
  
“Don’t stop….”  
  
It probably won’t hurt much at all when Erik finally takes him properly. Better that way—it has to be. He asked Erik to be gentle. This sweet slide of skin on skin, hands, trailing and swirling, learning him and torching his nerves. He asked, in place of blood and hurt, for _this._  
  
Whining low in his throat, he pulls away, which—oh, gods, it hurts, physically burning in his lungs and stomach. But covering any hesitance is a matter of a quick twitch of his hips, inviting—or it might have been involuntary, begging for more of that touch and singing nerves. And… it quiets that fire.  
  
“I—think I’m ready.” He’s panting quietly, and poking at Erik’s thigh with his knee. It would be more effective if he could get any purchase, but as sweaty as he is, his knee slides sideways and falls to the side.  
  
The sheets are too much—too sensitive—very black—  
  
Erik frowns. “You’re ready when I say you’re ready.”  
  
Concern never looked so controlling—but concern _is_ the root of it: Erik only ever frowns like that when he’s worried. Not fair, though, that he can warp that care—those clever, clever fingers—and control with it.  
  
Another loss of control. Not _fair._  
  
“No,” he counters—oh, please, please breathe, make this argument right, _fight_ —slowly, as deliberate as he can get, because, damn it—. “I am ready when _I_ say I’m ready, because it is _my_ body. And I’m telling you, I’m ready. Either fuck me or get out of bed.”  
  
The only way bearers have power, he’d heard someone once say, is in the bedroom. Well, let him rule, then—either on top or on bottom—and he does a good job of it, based on how Erik goes rigid, pulling his fingers out. They’re glistening, and when he parts them, the stickiness trails between his knuckles in shinning ropes of slick. He doesn’t wipe it away: just braces his hand on Charles’ hip, transferring the wetness.  
  
When he draws back and gets his cock in hand, guiding it toward Charles’ hole—  
  
More time might not be so bad, _never_ might be better—stop. This is… losing too much. It’s everything. After this, Erik will have—gods, _everything_ , but especially his gift, and this could be the wrong decision, not to fight. Erik had said he’d do it anyway, but he might not have been able to go through with it. Just because Erik _thought_ he knew— he _can’t_ have known—not until faced with tears and refusal and screams. He could have backed down under the pressure of all that, but here’s Charles, giving it up to him, just for the sake of not having it taken.  
  
Pathetic. Cowardly.  
  
But he doesn’t start screaming. He doesn’t kick or fight or protest, or do anything more than lie back and watch Erik line himself up. One glance upward from Erik, peering at Charles from under his eyelashes; waiting, while Charles takes a deep breath….  
  
The first push steals that breath. It doesn’t hurt. Not much. But—it’s in his brain. No, that’s not quite right: it was _already_ in his brain, but it expands, and ignites, tugging the last of that wrongness along and incinerating it. Something’s crackling, like the ice on the lake when it moves. Something previously fixed is breaking, realigning itself, coming together.  
  
His actual mind is coming apart.  
  
And he is falling through the cracks.  
  
This isn’t like fucking Erik. This is _mental._  
  
“Bloody buggering hell,” he gasps, grinding his teeth together. Sever the link, cut off the growing burn in his mind that’s narrowing into a silver thread: but it won’t go, won’t cut. That thread is—quicksilver, if he had to say, darting through every portion of his mind and threading it the same as if that silver were attached to a needle. Make it hurt—if it hurts it’s awful—but it doesn’t hurt. The needle is a flash of pleasure, lighting up his brain, flickering on one place, darting for the next—how can he be ripped apart in the best possible way and still call it destruction—?  
  
“Erik,” he chokes, flailing, lashing out with his hands and finding purchase on Erik’s shoulders. His mind, drifting—there must be an anchor.  
  
“Here,” Erik gasps from above him, rocking his hips forward, and pressure, pressure, _slide_.  
  
The pleasure isn’t all in his brain. Some of it is in other parts of his body, lower, only resonating in his brain—where pleasure comes from, in a sense—but his mind might as well be in his groin at the moment, and deeper too, that spot inside of him that—he’s read about it—heard—but this is beyond— _fantastic_. All that tightness, with his body doubling down on itself and drawing up tighter, clenching in pleasure and squeezing Erik from the inside.  
  
This is better—so much better—than being on top. There’s nothing wrong, and he can breathe again, even if he can’t take in breath.  
  
But his mind too—too much, far too much to take all in one go. That silver remains, sewing him up, finally to burst out and fly, sinking into Erik’s own mind and drawing them together, sewing them against each other with threads of thought and need, that needle flashing between their minds with pops of pleasure that explode one after the other, so predictable that Erik times his thrusts with them.  
  
“Oh, oh, oh—“ It could be the popping, or it could be his gasps, or the two could have melded together.  
  
“Always with me,” Erik pants, leaning down and resting his lips where he bit Charles’ neck earlier. Stillness, though, is far beyond him, straight past self-control. No reason he shouldn’t help himself to Charles’ skin, licking at the broken flesh that he’d marred with his own teeth. “Didn’t I tell you it would be better tonight, when it was just us?”  
  
All it took was a needle to the mind. Pulling tight, binding them up, tying off the thread—another thrust, shoving a moan out of him—no air left in his lungs—punctuated by a twist of his hips that will bruise Erik, bruise them both. They’ll be marked forever in so many ways.  
  
Erik chokes against his throat. Too much sensation for him too. Charles _knows_. It’s the same—“I can _feel_ you,” Erik murmurs. Yes, exactly. As open as their minds are, it’s all there. And another thrust, digging him down into the sheets, tossed about, head thrown back and hands clinging, body flopping with every new drive that Erik makes into his body. “Your _mind_. Beautiful—never—I never— _spectacular_.”  
  
It wouldn’t be like anything else. No other bond would be: a bond with a telepath is both bond and telepathic link—double jeopardy. Old World term. Still occasionally used. Charles read it in a book… which, incidentally, is also where he got his sex education.  
  
Those old dusty tomes never said it would feel like _this_.  
  
“Go on,” he whines, flexing his hands, driving back down to dig short, cultured nails into Erik’s back. This isn’t enough. More, please—as much as he can get, as much as he can pull to him by hooking his leg around the back of Erik’s thigh and, digging his ankle into the flesh and muscle, hauling him forward. He can feel Erik’s thrusts all the way up in his stomach—in the tightening, the clenching, which always existed just before he—  
  
That would explain it: one breath, two—oh, gods, right _there:_ he comes all over his own stomach and Erik’s chest, groaning and panting and shivering out something, something—so much of something that winds around in sated contentment and the sweetness of a daze. All that stickiness, spattering out between them, as if he weren’t marked already.  
  
As simple as that, but strangely profound too, in how Erik draws them together, grinding his teeth in exertion, puffing out breath against Charles’ shoulder, pushing into him again and again—but holding him too, snug in the cradle of his arms, same as he just did while Charles had shuddered out that second orgasm. Too much—too sensitive. Muscles—they—it’s… hard to think. Muscles clench during orgasm. He’s tight—or should be—around Erik’s cock, and their minds have contracted too, embracing each other.  
  
“ _Charles_.”  
  
That’s all it takes: Erik freezes, rigid, and then heaves out a breath, just as he comes, gasping, shaking out his joy through all of Charles’ mind. It’s white hot at first, reverberating up and down and—oh, he’s groaning too, high and sharp, grinding his teeth together—too much, too good—  
  
But it settles… and calms. His jaw loosens and aches, and his mind stutters out thoughts, watered down and weak at first, but growing stronger as he gets his breath back and the lightning swirls of pleasure stop circulating and jumping in his brain, swept under by that boneless contentment that had started up in his limbs right after orgasm.  
  
But it’s still Erik’s mind, in his, _there._  
  
 _Hello_ that consciousness says, bumping fondly into Charles’ own, though shaky with exhaustion and pleasure-weakness. Nothing at all was actually said, of course—only the sense of it. Only Erik’s essence mixing with his own on the deepest level possible.  
  
Deeper, even, then the rush of hot liquid up inside him. All that warmth shocks his insides. Will there be a baby? It could happen this quickly. Sometimes, all it takes is once. Or so Mother said: “Not even once, Charles, don’t do it; with what you are, it would ruin you.”  
  
For the time being, there are other more pressing matters: pressing, in the most literal sense of the word, when Erik’s arms give out and he drops forward, catching himself, only to fall again seconds later, this time thumping down onto Charles’ chest and staying there. Erik is by no means displeased by it, or, if he is, he’s hiding it well, mouthing tenderly against Charles’ jaw.  
  
As over-sensitive as Charles is—coming three times in such a short span of time—Erik must be operating under the misassumption that he’s a teenager. Twenty-nine isn’t old, but... it’s hardly young for a bearer. Most bearers are married by twenty, sometimes younger, have multiple children by now—  
  
“Stop thinking,” Erik grumbles, lips teasing over the underside of Charles’ jaw, nipping lightly at the softness there, where there’s no bone. He shifts his weight, sliding off to lie on the mattress, propped against Charles’ side, chest still half covering him. As if they weren’t close enough, he drapes his leg over Charles’ as well, smiling sleepily—so unbelievably complacent—and trailing the tips of his fingers down Charles’ chest.  
  
“I don’t ever stop thinking.” But, if he did, now would be ideal. He’s always felt slightly strung-out after sex, but this is ridiculous: this need to float back into the pillow, to close his eyes, worse than earlier after he pulled out of Erik….  
  
Not that he wants to sleep. Not on the bed. And—that’s Erik, stuck to him, touching the now-tacky cum on his chest—what is—how—how did he get here—let this happen—?  
  
He’s going to be sick.  
  
With a pitiably agonized whine, he lurches away from Erik and pitches toward the side of the bed, fighting to see through the watering in his eyes and to scramble his way out of the death-trap masquerading as bed sheets. He doesn’t—oh—foot caught, sliding, sliding—  
  
On the bright side, crashing hands first onto the floor does banish his nausea. At least he got his hands down, bruised though they’ll be, and it really, really hurts, stabbing rods of pain up into his arms, worse in the area on his right wrist where the mark is. Polished stone to flesh and bone will never produce a favorable outcome for the person involved.  
  
“Charles!”  
  
Ah, yes, the reason he’d thrown himself out of bed in the first place. And there’s that nausea, nice to see you, old friend, missed you in the last twenty seconds. He’s being absurd. And—does he honestly feel the urge to laugh? Why yes, yes he does. Long and loud and badly, but definitely there, welling up in his throat.   
  
But if you can’t laugh, cry—and that’s easier to explain. Oh, no, never mind: he’s doing both, right at the same time. Such an over-achiever.  
  
This is horrible. Erik will think him insane: an unstable bearer stereotype, and maybe it’s true. It _is_ becoming horribly clear that his mind is not his own. Disgust, mixed with lust, and combined with that overwhelming pull in his chest that has finally, finally vanished now that sex is done—those things weren’t meant to be together, and this isn’t _him_.  
  
Or it is: the him that is his biology, and his inclinations, divorced from logic and self-control.  
  
“Charles?”  
  
Leaning back, he—not a good idea to prop himself up on his hands. They’re… going to bruise, probably. Combined with the bandage ringing his right wrist, he’s going to resemble a war victim if he keeps on acquiring injuries. And he’s… sore. Inside. The pain is more of an ache than a real hurt, but it’s one he can’t ignore.  
  
But… he was looking up, trying to see Erik. That’s probably important. He ought to do that.  
  
Is this what hysteria feels like?  
  
Perhaps. But, Erik’s face—that’s what _worry_ looks like. No doubt he has good reason: if someone begins laughing hysterically and hurls himself off a bed after sex, it can’t possibly be a good sign.  
  
“I—I don’t feel right.” He really doesn’t. All dull and fuzzy and… no, he didn’t feel like that just a second ago. He’d been laughing a second ago. When did everything start blurring? He’s swaying, backed up against the bed, maybe—  
  
His chest is very tight.  
  
“Charles, _breathe_.”  
  
Wasn’t he? But… no, actually. That explains… everything, come to think of it, since obviously his mind will dull if he isn’t getting air. The fact that he can see Erik’s face at all, swimming in front of him, is something of a miracle.  
  
“I don’t—I—“ Lost. He—what does he want? What does he _really_ want, right in this moment? Twenty seconds ago it was to vomit; now that’s gone and he’s breathing again, but it’s all very vague and odd.  
  
Sleep. That would work. His brain can shut down if he sleeps, and he can push this all back, deal with it in the morning. Hysteria and disgust, self-hatred, desire—none of that tonight.  
  
And planning. In the morning. Because this—being swept up in the mess of biological imperative—can’t happen again.  
  
 _Please_ , not again.  
  
He shakes his head, caught on—those are Erik’s hands. At some point, Erik has framed his face with his hands, holding him steady. This also, apparently, requires that he lean in far too close, peering at Charles’ eyes, though if he wants to do that, Charles can peer right back, get a good look at what are honestly a very nice pair of eyes. Erik is an attractive man. Handsome eyes. Handsome man.  
  
“I can feel how scrambled you are,” Erik tells him.  
  
Can he? How? He tries to say that, but his lips don’t cooperate, and he never makes it past a questioning expression and disgruntled garble that tumbles out over his tongue.  
  
But Erik has always known him well enough to hear what he doesn’t say: “The bond. Even with your shields up—and you have them up _very_ high right now—I’ll always be able to feel a trickle of your emotion from now on. No thoughts—only how you’re feeling.”  
  
Only? That’s seems quite a lot from where he’s standing. Sitting. Slumping.  
  
Oh, and there he goes, sliding sideways—  
  
Erik catches him, one hand darting up and lodging itself just under Charles’ arm, nearly up under his armpit. But they’ve seen all of each other now—what does it matter if they stick their hands in less than appealing places? Erik can grab him where he likes, or so the law says, though the law doesn’t have much to say about intent and affection, and so it probably wouldn’t comment much on how Erik draws him forward into his arms, lifting him and dragging up upward—a tiny bump when his buttocks catch on the edge of the mattress, but with an extra heave, Erik has him over—and setting him back in bed—  
  
He’s rambling. Mentally. Funny, though: knowing that doesn’t necessarily mean he wants to stop. It’s quite pleasant, in its own way, when no one, least of all himself, expects him to make any sense.  
  
“My mind…“ He trails off. Fine. Whatever he was going to say, he’s forgotten it, so it must not have been too important.  
  
Erik disagrees: “…must be feeling jumbled,” he finishes. “I know. I’ve been told that telepaths often take a few hours to settle into the bond. It would be best if you slept it off.”  
  
Who’s he been talking to? It’s not as though telepaths are a dime a dozen.  
  
“Don’t want to sleep…” But he’s sinking down into the mattress, trying not to let his skin crawl away from his bones from the sheer discomfort of being on his back in bed again. He flops, floundering—Erik helps him turn—and, there, better on his side. Not good, but better.  
  
“Of course not,” Erik agrees indulgently, smoothing a kiss onto Charles’ temple, far enough up that he ends up nosing into hair.  
  
They’ve tangled up somehow, resting close enough for Erik to pet him, over and over, while he lays facing Charles. His eyes are fever bright—fanatic bright—and every time Charles so much as twitches a muscle, Erik’s gaze jumps to the movement. This must be for his own good. Isn’t that the logic? Erik is monitoring him to make sure he doesn’t harm himself or that he isn’t sick, or so he doesn’t get a paper cut or choke on his own spit by accident, or any of the other truly lethal things that could occur.  
  
“Is this the bond, or am I mad?”  
  
Erik’s brows jump. “I would guess that only something truly biological could move you to ask that question aloud.”  
  
“The bond, then?”  
  
Erik blinks. “Yes…” Slowly... “I would say so. Didn’t you know that it would kick into overdrive the moment we made a move to begin completing it?”  
  
“I don’t—I—“ He blinks too, just like Erik, and stares up at the wide gray ceiling: it looks like rainclouds. “Mmmm….” Such a dull, dreary color. “Erik.” Said thoughtfully, but, then, he _is_ thoughtful. “I don’t like this bond. I—get rid of it. Now, please.”  
  
A pause. And then: “That’s not how it works, Love.”  
  
“But you wouldn’t. Not even if you could.”  
  
“No.”  
  
Certainly not.  
  
Certainly, certainly—exactly how unhinged _is_ he right now?  
  
Very. Obviously.  
  
“Then _I_ will find a way to get rid of it, if you won’t.”  
  
But the little twinges of pleasure keep scrambling him, even though he’s crazy. It’s not nice to poke at a crazy person, but his brain doesn’t seem to know that: that horrid bond keeps on lapping at the edges of his unconsciousness, every so often drifting just a bit too high and catching him with the jolt that comes from being touched by the spillover, right before it retreats and vanishes. He can’t think like this.  
  
“You—you should get rid of it—the bond. You’re my husband. Means you’re supposed to take care of me. And I want—want—”  
  
Another kiss. “I know, _Schatz.”_  
  
Oh? Does he? That’s nice of him. “I… am going to sleep now.” Says it like he’s proud of it. He _is._ There’s not much he can still decide for himself.  
  
“An excellent choice,” Erik agrees.  
  
A pragmatic one too, since he’s nestled into the pillow, his feet tangled with Erik’s under the sheets—Erik must have drawn the sheets up over the both of them—where it’s remarkably cozy, and he can narrow his world down to the touch of Erik’s fingers in his hair, and the satisfaction radiating in his mind—doesn’t feel like his own satisfaction—and the smell of clean blankets, the luxury of closing his impossibly heavy eyelids—  
  
Even madness has to come to an end eventually.  
  
Sleep, then. Just sleep.  
  
Though, nothing _just_ about it, when it’s so wrongly come by….  
  
But, for now, he _will_ sleep.


	20. Chapter 20

Not surprisingly, sleep proves to be problematically unsustainable. The first few hours find him sleeping deeply, but, somewhere in the very early hours of the morning—before there’s a hint of light in the sky—something snaps him awake. It’s nothing—there’s nothing there. But, he’s asleep, and then he’s rocketing into awareness, skipping over the middle ground with a single step.  
  
Reality finds him lying on his stomach in bed, face pressed into his pillow, with Erik so close that they’re sharing heat: at some point, Erik must have turned over onto his side, tipping as though to move to lie on his stomach, only to find himself blocked by another body. Rather than giving up, it appears that he instead draped himself over Charles’ shoulder, one arm slung across Charles’ back, hand dangling off the other side limply enough that his fingers skim the sheets. His weight ought to be oppressive—it’s pinning half Charles’ body down to the bed—but some strange twist of instinct and fate has warped it into a bizarrely comforting feeling.  
  
Instinct. There’s no debating that. With Erik half on top of him, his body knows that any threat will have to go through Erik to reach him. Simple as that.  
  
Though, taking into consideration what it _really_ means, it’s not simple at all.  
  
Still, at least the muddiness has washed away: his mind has cleared sometime in the last few hours, enough that it’s possible to perceive the bond settling and solidifying—not that it could be ripped out now anyway.  
  
No, it’s dug its claws in, and there will be no disentangling himself from Erik—not anymore. Not where it counts.  
  
The thought is enough to morph the weight on top of him into something very stifling indeed. They’ve both been sweating, and their skin is sticking together, and Erik’s breath against his neck is overwhelming, and—space is suddenly a very necessary requirement. Now.  
  
Wiggling sideways, he shimmies his body over the sheets—he’s pasty against the black, and worse from the moonlight—and slides out from under Erik’s arm. Erik, apparently sensing that he’s lost his bedmate, garbles a disapproving tangle of words under his breath, but, though he frowns and pats loosely at the area where Charles’ had just been, he doesn’t wake, and after a few unsettled twitches of his legs, he stops reaching out to the space Charles left and, though his sleep is now visibly less serene, quiets.  
  
“Not so pleasant, not getting what you want, is it?” Staying steady is a challenge, but he scrapes by the difficulty and only sways a very little bit, fighting to stay steady while he looks down at Erik.  
  
Erik, who is vulnerable in sleep. Open, and exposed.  
  
If he wanted, he could kill Erik. A lack of actual weapons in the room doesn’t mean much: Erik may have dulled the sword—which, conveniently enough, is resting on a table to the side of the room—but a few smacks to Erik’s head, and, blunt or not, it’s going to leave a mark. It would most definitely knock Erik out long enough to finish the job with a few follow-up hits.  
  
Would it be better to do it? He slides his feet backwards, dragging them over the cold floor—he’s naked—and catching the chill up into the skin. Erik’s actions are going to have catastrophic repercussions. So many might be spared if—if—  
  
And, he’s tried it before, that night with the knife—  
  
 _You gave up awfully quickly._ Always, that voice in his head, arguing. Would the world have been better if he’d succeeded?  
  
But… he’s hit a wall, both with that line of reasoning, and physically. He’s literally backed himself straight up into the wall, and, without clothes, the marble is chilling, smoothing along his skin unpleasantly with each breath. But… it isn’t worth pulling away. The subsequent little shivers are grounding, and it’s better than being lost in his mind.  
  
Once, the mind was a place of refuge. Telepathy was an escape, where he could fly out over the world, skipping from mind to mind, and while that had the potential to uncover distasteful information, the possibility of good was enough to lighten the experience into a release, rather than captivity. Now, with the bond—that will never be the case again. Erik, if he cares to look, will see everything. Peeking into other people’s minds is now the equivalent of endangering their lives—or it necessitates burying the memories. It isn’t possible to do that for everything: it’s a tactic that must be used sparingly.  
  
Killing Erik would end that.  
  
It would sever the bond. Death is the only form of escape that’s viable. Death for either himself or for Erik, but, if it were Erik, the bond would melt away, and—it’s only now, with the bond completed, that the effects of the lack of completion are clear: that muddled, lust clouded perception of the world is… really no different than a normal level of attraction, only… _more_. It’s attraction times a thousand, and—breathing is possible again, now that it’s done.  
  
Not easy, but possible.  
  
Taking advantage of that—breathing—he tips his head back and rests it against the wall. The attraction to Erik is there, but it isn’t so driving as it was before: no frantic push to be close, to concede, and to—it doesn’t bear thinking about, what happened. Add in a little genuine love, a year of good memories, and it’s little wonder he was so hopelessly muddled.  
  
Now, though… it isn’t gone, but—gods, what can he do _now_?  
  
Kill Erik? It’s unthinkable, when watching him sleep like this, still frowning, hand spread over where Charles was previously lying. There’s a certain degree of trust that’s inherent in any situation where one person falls asleep in the presence of another. Erik knows that better than most: in all the time Charles has known him, he’s always been aware that Erik goes from sleeping to waking with almost no transition at all, and he wakes at the slight provocation. It’s a leftover from his time in the prison camps.  
  
In order for him to stay so completely asleep like this, his mind must have processed that Charles isn’t a threat.  
  
And that’s precisely the definition of a mate, isn’t it? The one person in the world who should never hurt you.  
  
Pressing back into the wall, he stamps down on the chattering of his teeth. He won’t go back to bed. He won’t. None of this was supposed to happen. It was never a choice, and why go back to bed, why honor the trust built into the bond when it was never requested in the first place?  
  
But, gods, the _thoughts_ won’t leave. Kill Erik, kill Erik…  
  
Kill Erik, and—what?  
  
Killing Erik would be a violation of nature itself. But it shouldn’t matter. Nature was never _asked_ to do create this—this _thing_ between them. The bond.  
  
 _No_. Always that horrible voice. _You didn’t ask,_ _but it’s what you wanted._  
  
Not true. He never wanted _this_. He wanted Erik, sure, in a different reality he would even have wanted a bond, but never wanted _this_. Having fallen in love with Erik doesn’t equate to guilt but only to naivety. It doesn’t mean asking for any of this to happen. Logical consequences should have led him to realize this was what would happen, but—  
  
Mashing his eyes shut, he reaches up to grind his palm against his forehead. Stop it—stop—  
  
There’s nothing here to think about. Killing Erik is out of the question. Call it personal weakness, but, frankly, it’s a horrible tactical move at this point anyway, when the situation is far more tangled than it was before Erik took Westchester. This time, if he kills Erik, he has no support network, no one to help him smooth a transition governmentally. He kills Erik now and he’ll ignite civil war: any number of people would step forward to vie for the throne. If he’s going to assassinate Erik, there needs to be a system in place first, some way to get in contact with Westchester’s soldiers, to have people ready to step in and run each region. It would take extensive planning, and it’s not something that can be orchestrated tonight in this bedroom.  
  
In terms of bloodshed caused, killing Erik would be worse than letting him live.  
  
The wave of relief that mixes with his chilled shivers means nothing. Who wouldn’t be relieved not to have to commit murder? Anyone with a conscience would be pleased to have an excuse not to kill someone.  
  
But… that falls through almost before the thought forms, and he tips his head further back against the wall, staring up at the ceiling. Gray, just like earlier in the night. Just wonderful. He wasn’t lying to himself _then_ , when he’d been too scrambled from the bond initiation. His body had known what it wanted—and it had fallen asleep next to Erik. To try to argue that it’s not more personal with Erik—it’s a godsdamned lie, complicated by the bond and this whole fucking mess of a situation. He… loves Erik. Resentment doesn’t change that, and, if anything it complicates it.  
  
And it’s time to stop lying: never has he wanted to do anything less than he wants to kill Erik Lehnsherr.  
  
Conversely, it’s probably also true that never has he wanted to do anything more—but only in theory. Reality—even the prospect of it—would look rather a lot bleaker once Erik’s heart stops beating and morning dawns in a world where there’s a corpse in the bed and an unplanned revolution in the streets. And, now that David is back, suicide is no longer an option… and there’s the real sense—a pounding, frantic heartbeat, from the thought alone—that he couldn’t live in a world where he’s killed Erik.  
  
So… linked.  
  
No, there will be no murder here tonight.  
  
Decision prompts a release: he gasps out into the chilled air, sliding down the wall and crumpling at the base. Bloody hell, it’s cold. The most obvious option to combat that is to crawl back into bed, but… no. That’s _not_ an option.  
  
The nursery, though, _is._  
  
It takes several seconds to get his muscles working, but, once he does, it’s the matter of a few moments to march himself across the room and into the nursery, where his nest of blankets remains, waiting for him. Erik will doubtless be irritated in the morning, but in the dark of night this seems the better option by far, and it’s not as though Erik’s ire isn’t consistent on a daily basis—might as well start the day by provoking it.  
  
It isn’t until he wraps himself up in the blankets that it registers: the floor, though unforgiving and hard on every other night, is especially problematic now. He’s _sore_. On a mattress, it wasn’t as noticeable, but, with nothing under him but a few blankets, it’s more than a realization in the back of the mind, growing instead into a noticeable ache that’s exacerbated by the lack of cushion.  
  
It isn’t that Erik was rough—quite the opposite, actually. But a first time is a still a first time no matter what, and his body is unused to penetration. There’s no way to avoid the ache that centers on the base of his spine—worse, he’s heard, than it would be for a woman. Men may have mutated in the past few hundred years, but woman have an entire world’s worth of time to act as a head start. Their bodies are simply better built for this.  
  
It’s not so bad, though. He can tolerate it. It’s only an ache, and he’s had much, much worse—war injuries, especially. That one in the final battle against Shaw—that had ached for months. This is nothing next to that, save that it’s in a much more intimate place, and for a more invasive reason.  
  
Curling in on himself, he buries his face into one of the blankets and tries to breathe. In, out, in, out, always through his nose, same as he’d order for a distraught child. It’s all right. It’s okay. This can be survived, and, in the morning, he’ll plan, he’ll think of _something_ , and.... If he keeps this up, concentrating on breathing—not breaking—and nothing else, he’ll fall back asleep, and there won’t be dreams….  
  
 _In, out, in, out…._  
  
\--------------------  
  
“Oh, Love…”  
  
Charles has never been much of a morning person. Even as king of Westchester, it was an effort to drag himself out of the warm cocoon of blankets, to put his feet down onto the icy floor, and to shake off that veil of sleep. He’s never been a _good_ sleeper, being far too fretful for that, but, once he does manage to drop off, he prefers to stay that way.  
  
No reason that should have changed….  
  
But this—this touch: no threat, nothing scary, although hands in his hair could mean murder on the battlefield. Someone ready to cut his throat, break his neck—but not here. Here, it only means that he needs to turn over, confront that voice and those hands that are tilting his face up—  
  
Discomfort drags its way up his spine. That—that _hurts_. Whatever it was—that _hurts_.  
  
Whining low in his throat, he pushes his face up into the hands cupping his cheeks. A careful, gentle touch, though there’s something off, some niggling doubt.  
  
Oh. Erik. Yes, _Erik_.  
  
Well, he’s certainly awake _now_. And that hurt? He’s _sore_.  
  
Dragging his eyes open through sheer effort—facing another day is hardly a pleasant prospect—he’s met with a comfortable, easy stare, laced with the slowness of a lazy morning. “Charles,” Erik sighs, exasperated, though that’s largely lost under the fondness, and the lopsided smile that he’s effecting quashes whatever was left. “It’s impolite to leave your husband to wake up alone. I was worried.”  
  
No doubt he was. Charles could have drowned in the shower; or tripped on the bedpost; or, horror of all horrors, somehow found a way to leave their suite. Problematically, though, while Erik’s scrutiny is always overblown and undeserved—maybe a _little_ deserved, from Erik’s perspective—it’s not avoidable. Facing it now—shaking off the blankets—simply makes sense, lest it grow more intense. Unfortunately, the sudden unexpected impetus to be up and awake fades seconds later, half-way through the motion: he stops, propped up on his elbows, legs entangled in the blankets, and—gods, it’s impossible to ignore the ache in his backside. “Just here.”  
  
How is Erik not sore? Crouched like that—he _must_ be sore, but he’s hiding it well.  
  
Erik snorts softly. “So I see. You know you can’t keep doing this, don’t you?”  
  
Is that a challenge? “What, sleeping in the nursery?”  
  
They both know that’s precisely what Erik means. Stalling, though, is never remiss.  
  
“More or less.”  
  
Erik must truly have been displeased to find that he woke alone. It’s not really about Charles sleeping in the nursery at all—only that he didn’t sleep with _Erik_.  
  
But he did, though—in every sense of the word.  
  
“I like the nursery.”  
  
Before breakfast, and already they’re set for a fight. Let no one say that they don’t make the most of their time together.  
  
It would also be best if no one pointed out that, up until now, Erik’s hands haven’t moved from his face. _That_ is disconcerting in the extreme, more for the fact that he’s only now noticed it indirectly, when some dark corner of his brain acknowledged that he liked the warmth and didn’t see the need to move. But he _should_ want to move—he _does_ want to move now, to stop last night from happening again. But the very same dark corner is also quite keen to stay put, soaking in that affection. If he’s very lucky, Erik might even bring him breakfast—  
  
Right. Cut that line of thought off before it starts. That is such a classically bearer thought, hoping to be cared for and doted upon. If Erik is permitted to start indulging in that behavior, there will be no stopping it.  
  
“I can feel you’re afraid.” Stated as fact—which, sadly, it is. Erik leans in a little closer, smoothing his hands down Charles’s face, to his neck, before dropping away altogether in favor of getting a grip on Charles’ arms—far better for pulling him forward out of his nest of blankets, trailing him along on his knees, until he overbalances and tips forward into Erik’s arms.  
  
Soft and gentle and warm, very safe— _no_. This is intolerable.  
  
“Why are you afraid?” Erik pushes on, settling himself down onto the blankets, Charles ensconced securely in his lap—thankfully, Erik isn’t hard—close enough that Erik can draw his knees up around Charles’ sides and plant his feet between Charles’ legs, effectively fencing him in. His arms follow suit, winding about Charles’ middle, skittering over his ribs, and finally clasping opposite elbows: pulling out of Erik’s grip is hardly going to present as an option in the near future. It’s too close, too boxed in without an option to leave or to move or to—anything, really.  
  
“Worried about David.”  
  
Erik laughs against his ear, bumping his cheek affectionately against Charles’ own. “I call shenanigans.”  
  
“Call what you like.”  
  
“Your name, then? Would you like that?”  
  
Bloody hell. “No.” But he’s flushing. Damn it.  
  
Last night, he considered killing this man. And this morning, with the help of a little proximity, his body is already responding. Gods, how can this be the future? A life of this…  
  
No. He’s been ruled by this bond for long enough. Feeling something doesn’t require acting on it.  
Erik’s lips brush his cheek, and his arms shift, jostling Charles enough that he twists, elbowing at Erik’s stomach until he receives a sharp grunt and the jostling stops. “Tell me what’s bothering you.” Sweet. Cajoling. “I’ll fix it.”  
  
Which would involve Erik removing himself from the equation, so, no, he probably won’t. “No, thank you.”  
  
Slight oversight on his part: he ought to have remembered that the bond goes both ways, and, thus, the tiny frustrated pop of emotion in his head ought not to take him by surprise—but it does, and he recoils back against Erik, thumping hard into his chest.  
  
Erik hums thoughtfully. “Surprised? Forgot you could feel what I do?”  
  
“Not used to it.” Not without _trying_ to feel others’ emotions—or, rather, dropping his shields enough to let in the feelings. “Are we always going to feel each other this clearly?”  
  
Erik shakes his head. “No. I’m told that it will fade to the point where we’ll only experience feedback from a particularly strong emotion—or if we go searching the emotions out. But we’ll always have the _option_ to sense each other’s feelings. It’ll be a matter of pulling it up, rather than having to actively block it out.”  
  
“Which is different from now, how, exactly?”  
  
“Your shields won’t work with this. Your emotions will essentially be waiting at the entrance to your side of the bond and vice versa. Think of it as a contracting passage: if it opens, everything that’s been waiting on the other side floods through—and both of us can open it anytime we like.”  
  
Anytime Erik wants, there will be no hiding emotions anymore. Scared, angry, happy, pleasured—there will be no lying about it. Who would _want_ this? It’s the greatest intimacy possible, but intimacy is only another name for loss of privacy.  
  
But… perhaps—there’s a possibility—this could be used. If emotions can be dragged up artificially, there would be a chance of obfuscating reality, or at least the emotional perception of it. A misdirection, as such, and it won’t be any good in directly manipulating Erik, but indirectly….  
  
“Scared again.”  
  
Bloody hell. He needs space, time to process through this. Stop looking, please, please—but Erik can’t stop at this juncture, can he? Neither of them can. All that curiosity leaking through on Erik’s side, worry, want—oh, gods, _stop_.  
  
“Shhhh, _Schatz_ , really, it’s all right. I won’t abuse it.” Those arms tighten, and—does Erik have to do this every time, always at the right moment? This slow rocking that is truly too calming, that works too well. It’s foreign, overriding what he _should_ be feeling, turning him to emotions that aren’t right. He _should_ be terrified at what he’s losing. It’s wrong to settle down, to relax and let Erik hold him. It’s artificial.  
  
Before the bond completed, it was easier to drift in the haze of that pull—that overwhelming desire to cleave to Erik and mate, to finish up what had been started. Now, though, everything is starker, albeit wrapped in emotion. But it’s manageable, now that they aren’t being pulled toward a specific act: and the strength will dull down to lower levels soon, evening out and settling for life. Oh, gods, for _life._ Please, if he goes under again, loses himself—  
  
He won’t. Now that the bond is in place, the draw to sex will… it’ll still be there, but it won’t be so all-consuming. He’ll fight. He _can_ fight it. The bond can create a pull, but it doesn’t move muscles, doesn’t puppet him into certain actions. _It can be fought._  
  
But that’s not the only thing: _I won’t abuse it,_ Erik said. And he could—he could abuse so much. Already he’s so good at holding Charles tight against him chest, wielding biology expertly to coax him into a state of calm: what if he wants that to be permanent? He could do that now. Maybe not him personally, but he could hold Charles’ mind open while Emma ripped out memories and planted suggestions, turning him into some kind of facsimile of himself—a perfect version that does as Erik says, that listens and obeys, and smiles and has babies, and—  
  
That can’t happen. It _can’t_.  
  
At least he’s worked himself back up out of the artificial calm. That’s something. Though, that might be more due to the fact that he’s started thrashing against Erik’s rhythmic swaying.  
  
Unfortunately, bigger and stronger does have its advantages, and Erik is not averse to using them: he locks his arms around Charles’ upper body, and no amount of throwing himself against that makes much difference in anything besides the number of bruises he’s going to have. Pure madness, that’s what this is—and Erik’s _confused_ , for the love of—he can’t be serious. Confused? There’s nothing for him to be confused about. He’s the one with all the answers, all the power. “Shhh, Charles, stop—what is _wrong_?!”  
  
Wrong? What’s wrong? The fact that Erik has to ask, for starters. He ought to pull out a list and start reading, so extensive are Erik’s transgressions.  
  
But… if he tells Erik that, rips into him, this could turn out worse. And this is important: if Erik promises—Erik keeps his promises. Getting him to promise might stay his hand later. “You have to—have to—“ But he can’t get the words out.  
  
“Shhhh.” Soft and sweet and tender, matched with his lips—a little chapped—pressed over and over to Charles’ temple, his jaw, entirely without aggression or intent beyond comfort. He’s stopped squeezing quite so tightly too, and the rocking has resumed. “What do I have to do? Tell me.”  
  
Good. Because if he doesn’t… “You have to promise,” he finally spits out, catching the words on his teeth. “Promise me you’ll never change my mind.”  
  
Erik’s eyelashes sweep against Charles’ skin: he’s blinking. And, yes, there, through the bond, there’s a trickle of surprise that quickly becomes a gush. “I don’t follow.”  
  
“That you won’t go into my mind and… edit it. Make me think things that aren’t really my own.”  
  
The way Erik startles, anyone would think that’s an unreasonable worry. “You mean use the bond to make you think things? Charles, I couldn’t, it doesn’t work like that—“  
  
“You held my mind open for Emma.”  
  
Did he think that wouldn’t come back up between them? He must have. For someone who clings to things in the past so desperately, he’s atrociously bad at realizing that others might do the same. “You—what?—you think I’d do that again, so she could… what? _Edit_ you?”  
  
Coming from Erik, it sounds absurdly farfetched. More importantly, there’s a rush of surprise, practically a hemorrhage, straight down the bond. Erik hasn’t been actively considering it, then. He wouldn’t be so shocked if he had been.  
  
“No. I wouldn’t— _no_.” His fingers dig down in Charles’ skin, pressing in at his arms and dragging him flush back against Erik’s chest, so close that he can feel Erik’s heart racing against his shoulder. “Charles, I would _never_ do that to you. Gods, how can you even think—?“ A shaky breath against his neck. “Never, do you hear me? It wouldn’t be _you_ anymore if I did that. Your mind—don’t you know it’s your mind that I love best?”  
  
There’s nothing to know—not for certain. But Erik does _sound_ sincere, and he’s emotionally illuminated with the intensity of his earnestness, which must count for something. Unless—does Erik know how to call up other memories, to make himself feel things as an actor would? Emotions can be faked. But… this doesn’t feel fake. “All right.” It’s said shakily, with the end vowel bitten off. “I—all right.” Because if Erik is lying, there’s nothing he can do. And if he doesn’t believe Erik, he’ll go crazy waiting for it to happen.  
  
So: believe him, trust his… husband, just this once.  
  
By sheer force of will, he settles, calming enough to sink back and rest his head in the crook of Erik’s shoulder. For lack of a better option— _liar, you like it—_ he lets himself be held snuggly, showered with kisses and wispy caress that turn more substantial when Erik realizes they aren’t being rejected. “You believe me?” he asks after a moment.  
  
Charles shrugs, ignoring the drag of naked skin against skin. Oh. They’re… both still naked, sitting in a pile of blankets on the floor. Absurd. No one will walk in, of course, when it’s the morning after their wedding, but there’s the sense that the very walls themselves are watching.  
  
Erik, predictably, isn’t abashed at all, more than content to keep up his steady litany of reassurance and affection. It’s… nice, in its own bizarre way, insomuch as it leaves Charles free to stare at the opposite wall and to collect breath back into his chest—to gear up to face whatever comes next. For now, Erik can pledge reassurance against the skin of his neck, hands spread over Charles’ stomach, clutching him tightly. Still a flat stomach, for the time being, though Erik must be picturing what he’ll look like when it swells—and he’s probably making these promises with the future children in mind too.  
  
It’s surprising, how easy it is to do this. Not to disconnect—his body sings for Erik’s touch—even when it’s not sexual—and his mind would also like to latch back onto that warm draw. But to… view it as it’s happening— _that_ is possible. He’ll have to fight for his autonomy from now on. But once he does manage that separation, it’s simple enough in theory to maintain it, and to bear up against the pressure that’s always there.  
  
Good. He’ll need this from now on. What’s done is done, the bond is complete, and—he needs to find a way out of this—  
  
His stomach pitches violently, and he has to close his eyes. Stop that. Mind over body. He’s _fine._  
  
Right, and—yes, it’s happened, so he’ll deal with it. First rule when he was king: if it can’t be avoided, turn it to his advantage. He can do that here. He’s… married. Erik is—is—there has to be advantages to being married to Erik. Trust. Yes, that’s a valid reason. Erik will trust him—  
  
“Charles.”  
  
He startles. “Hmmm?”  
  
“You all right?”  
  
Didn’t Erik just ask him that? Just a few—was it a few minutes ago? How much time has passed? Surely he wasn’t so lost in thought as to lose time… “Fine.”  
  
A slight pause: no reason for Erik to find that answer convincing when he can sense the turmoil down through the bond. But, thankfully, he doesn’t chase the topic. “How about some breakfast? Or perhaps a shower? Or even a bath—that might be better.”  
  
A very nice prospect indeed: hot water would be lovely on his aching muscles. It shouldn’t be possible to ache _inside_ his body. And, if he washed, he’d feel a little less dirty in the ways that truly count. He’s always heard rape victims describe it as—  
  
Wait—that’s not—  
  
Is that what he is? He—his limbs—they’ve gone numb, swallowed by a dizzying fuzziness that blanks out his mind and drags him down. That—an identity so liable to destroy a person—that is not something to be bandied about, whether those thoughts remain locked in his own mind or not. And it’s too simple an explanation for what’s happened. He might technically qualify for… _that_ , but it’s _not_ his situation. Erik never held him down and hurt him or assaulted him. What he’s feeling—this sensation of itching, reminiscent of insects crawling on his skin—could derive from a particularly bad morning after. Slept with the wrong person, made a bad decision, regretted it in the morning light—it’s not an uncommon story, and it’s entirely different from outright non-consensual sex. Feeling uncomfortable in his own skin doesn’t make anything rape.  
  
He breathes out, forcing the air into evenness. There: pinpoint control. His lungs obey him; he has his body in check this morning. See? Good. Another breath. This may not be what he wanted, but hasn’t yet lost the ability to control himself—and, more importantly, he hasn’t lost the ability to control _others_. He’s good, he’s brilliant, he’s a damn near amazing strategist—why w _ouldn’t_ he be able to manipulate Erik into doing what he wants?  
  
Not that he’s been utilizing that ability particularly well so far.  
  
But—it’s a damn pathetic excuse, trying to blame it all on the bond. Now, though—things aren’t quite _clear_ , but there isn’t the looming terror of sex, coupled with the incendiary drive to complete the bond. It’s… more a of a slow burn now, but—  
  
Fuck. This has to end. Fucking _see_ it for what it is: there will still be that pull, and maybe he can’t avoid rolling over for Erik, both in his desires and in the physical, but that doesn’t have to become the be all and end all. There’s power to be had over Erik—and he’ll _use_ it, damn it, like the clever person he’s supposed to be. Get off his ass and stop feeling sorry for himself, and make the best of what he’s got. He’s Charles Xavier, and he’s ruled a region: he can rule one man.  
  
It’s a bitter irony that, at the base of things, it’s controlling _himself_ that is the problem.  
  
Fine. Just… recognize that. Personal weakness can be avoided, or at very least compartmentalized and circumvented.  
  
It’s true that controlling himself around Erik is a steadily deteriorating battle. A time bomb, if you will: biology and proximity would wear even the strongest individual down eventually. And that’s all the more reason to find a way out—and to find it soon.  
  
Simple.  
  
“Bath, please,” he says, and, case in point: no shaking in his voice. It’s all a matter of making a decision and sticking to it. Erik can fuck him into the mattress every night if that’s what it takes—if he can’t get a hold of himself well enough to rebuff Erik in that too—but in the quiet moments, duty calls for the sort of planning that should have been happening all along. “I’d like a bath.”  
  
And how very quickly Erik jumps to obey: before the words are entirely out of Charles’ mouth, Erik is rising to his feet, drawing Charles up along with him.  
  
Oh.  
  
Things are… stiff. Really stiff: the ache from last night has tightened up, enough that each movement unleashes discomfort that trails up his spine, nestling low in his back and carving out a home there. But—all right. He can do this. It’s not insurmountable. Some things are simply bodily reactions. It doesn’t mean anything.  
  
“You’re sore,” Erik comments once he has Charles on his feet. Walking alone is apparently out of the question: he makes no move to let Charles go, but curves his fingers into the jut of his hipbones, nudging him forward with a small bump, shoulder to shoulder.  
  
Walking is… not pleasant, but things loosen with each step, and by the time they’re halfway across the room he’s not moving quite so much like a geriatric old man. Progress is progress, no matter how small: compensation for the knowledge that, in reality, it likely doesn’t hurt so much as he’s thinking. He’s worked it up in his mind until every pull is a tear, and it’s near enough to reliving last night that—the body has a mind of its own, it would appear: all his muscles seize up tight.  
  
He’s _fine_. Ridiculous, that his body doesn’t know that.  
  
“Was I too rough?” Erik asks, not bothering to hide his concern.  
  
“You were fine.”  
  
“You need to tell me if something hurt, Charles. If there was something you didn’t like, that could have felt better—“  
  
As if sex is so very academic. “If you please, could you save the performance review for when I’m not feeling quite so…” Sensitive? Raw?  
  
Erik’s grip tightens. “Sorry.”  
  
“Forgiven.” In some sense: holding onto the little hurts in the face of the bigger ones is impractical.  
  
They reach the bathroom together, with Erik reaching out toward the handle before they’re in touching distance, waving the door open with the ease of habit. For the first time, being already naked actually presents itself as a benefit: right at this moment, stripping for Erik would be overwhelming in a way that defies examination.  
  
Being steered into the bathroom isn’t without its embarrassments either, but at least the water in the bath is already there: one of the perks of having a veritable swimming space in their bathroom, in the form of a small tiled pool—no more than eight feet by eight feet—decorated in a blue-green mosaic of swirls meant to imitate waves. The water is filtered and always runs warm, ready for the room’s occupants to sink down into it at any time and perch themselves on the seats that ring the edge beneath the water.  
  
As soon as they reach the bath, Erik guides him down into the water with attendant care, nudging him onto the seat and, still standing, sidling up close in front of him, bracketing Charles in on either side with his arms. Already he’s reaching for the cloth and the bar of soap set in a convenient tray on the edge of the pool.  
  
“Let me?” he asks, gesturing toward Charles with the cloth and ducking his head down a few inches, observing Charles out of the corner of his eye. Like this, he could almost pass for shy.  
  
Yesterday, he might have demanded that Erik let him wash himself. But… today it seems such an effort. One can only fight about so many things, and, despite the fact that he’s just woken, he’s tired. Let Erik do what he wants in this case. Better still: Erik wants this, and that makes it into a possibility. This is the foundation of negotiation, no more complicated than how far he wants his arms in the water: better to be cold and out of the water or a little overly warm, as he is right now?  
  
He settles for propping his arms on the floor outside the tub—and nods his permission to Erik. Simple.  
  
Erik’s smile is nearly blinding. “Thank you.”  
  
As if thanking someone for allowing you to wash him is perfectly normal. He’ll forgive Erik his idiosyncrasies, though, in the face of how gentle he is with the cloth and the soap. Helpful, too, that he doesn’t reek of sexual motivation: he runs his hand over patch of skin after patch of skin, soapy and slick, but he’s sweet, rather than lustful, and whatever he’s getting out of this, it’s coming down the bond as affection and something frighteningly close to reverence.  
  
Very fitting: isn’t it what you worship most that always betrays you?  
  
They wash in silence, but, far from being awkward, it’s actually surprisingly comfortable. Erik isn’t going to hurt him, and silence removes the obligation to argue against whatever Erik is saying. For now, he can drift listlessly, close his eyes and tip his head back against the edge of the tub, enjoy a gentle rub-down from someone who honestly wants to make him feel good. Motives aside, that’s not such a bad prospect.  
  
Not much of a shock that it doesn’t last.  
  
After a matter of minutes, hands slip up his sides, tugging him off the seat and into the open space of the water. “Slide this way,” Erik coaxes, though there’s not much chance for refusal: he’s already pulling Charles into the circle of his arms, never mind that, if they were to stand, the pool is only deep enough to go about halfway up their stomachs. “Do you mind if I tip you back to get your hair?”  
  
Let Erik take all his weight, hold him underneath the water? That… should be less disturbing of a prospect than it is. He’s fought back to back with this man: trusting his life to Erik is hardly anything new. Only the form has changed, morphing into concentrated intimacy. Death is nothing: if Erik betrays him in _this_ , the consequences will be nowhere as quick as a sword to the back.  
  
This really isn’t about letting Erik dunk him under, is it?  
  
Intelligent man that he is, Erik must be thinking similar thoughts—no one forgets fighting on a battlefield, holding another man’s life—though he doesn’t say so. “Can you sit on the seat?” he offers instead. “Lean back some?”  
  
A motion undertaken by his own will, with his own muscles, and which doesn’t rely on Erik—very clever of Erik to suggest it. Cleverer still, in that he knows why Erik offered, and he can’t help but feel more at ease regardless. Some of that must have carried over into his posture; Erik takes it as invitation, trailing him slowly through the water and to the bench, where he lowers him down. One hand goes to the back of his neck, supporting him, but when the actual time to lean back comes, its his own hand—not Erik’s—on the edge of the tub that does most of the supporting.  
  
“Stay just like that.”  
  
Warm water rushes over his hair, flushing through dirty locks chocked with sweat, washing the grime away. Not much else in the last few days has felt this satisfying. Another rush of water follows: Erik, cupping the water in the palm of his hand, and dumping it onto the hair. Even when he reaches for the shampoo, lathering it up and rubbing it into Charles’ hair, the warmth and the cleanliness offers a lifebuoy to cling to. Just close his eyes, enjoy fingers through the hair, against the scalp, washing all that filth away….  
  
Wash, rinse, repeat. No droplets in his eyes, and a small few down his face: he flinches, trying to shrug the moisture away with the lines of his face. It goes willingly enough, leaving him to smooth his skin back into placidity and to toss his head, preventing any rogue locks from assaulting his face.  
  
“Done.”  
  
So quickly? It hadn’t felt that long at all.  
  
“Get my back?”  
  
What? As in, wash Erik, as Erik has just washed him? “Can’t you do it yourself?”  
  
Erik frowns, brandishing the bar of soap in Charles’ general direction. At this point, it’s a far deadlier weapon than any sword. “I _can_ ; I _want_ you to help me.”  
  
“And if that’s not what _I_ want?”  
  
One sentence, and it’s enough to start the heart racing. What if this leads to—what? To sex? They’ve already passed that point. Erik will have him again. He’s made that clear. All right, so—just take a moment, touch back against the wall and trace the slickness of the tiles. Stall, and stall some more.  
  
It’s not so complicated: offering Erik something in order to draw him into doing as he’s bid. What, then, is a good bargain? It already has to be on the table before Erik realizes they’ve begun to haggle, and, better yet, accepted before Erik realizes it was a negotiation. This time, Erik isn’t even asking for—well, for a full-out fucking, if one is feeling crass—and, oh, Charles _is_. Best call it what it is.  
  
Fucking. Just sex. Something Erik is demanding that Charles needs to give, in order to make an exchange.  
  
“Charles.” Exasperation. Nice to know that zero progress has been made. “We are _married_.”  
  
Yes, because Erik demanded it. But saying that will only whip up an argument… and he’ll never get out of this room, never get David back—  
  
Oh. David. _Yes._  
  
What does a bar of soap and some skin matter in exchange for seeing his son this morning? Any discomfort he has with putting his hands on Erik is psychological and patently foolish: Erik didn’t harm him, and any sex they have after this doesn’t change things—don’t think of pregnancy, do _not_ —now that the bond is already cemented.  
  
None of that accounts for the shaking in his hand when he reaches out and plucks the soap from Erik’s hand. It’s nothing short of a miracle that it doesn’t slip away. “Turn around.” Nothing sexy about how that sounds, unless one finds a dull and wooden tone appealing.  
  
He can do this. If he doesn’t, how can he ever possibly hope to do anything more? After everything that has happened, he cannot spend the rest of his life acting out of conjunction with his body, scared at every prospect of touch and intimacy and all the little things that he’s always taken for granted.  
  
Except, acting out of conjunction with his body is the name of the game. His body _wants_ Erik, and it’s making inroads into his mind too. This is a matter of fighting not only Erik, but fighting _himself_ , and winning.  
  
Consider this a lesson in mastery, then: how to navigate intimacy without being lost to it, as was the case last night.  
  
Regardless of how unappealing his tone must sound, Erik does turn around, bracing his hands on the sides of the bath. His relaxation is enviable: how he holds his weight casually slung to the side, leveled on one leg, arms propping him up without a hint of strain. His body is a seamless extension of who _he_ is, and he has likely never had to understand how it feels to be aware of every single limb, every finger, every twitch of muscle in any way beyond what it means to use all of those in a fight. But—these last few days—well, it’s possible, on occasion, to physically be too much yourself, when that becomes intense enough to drive you out of your mind.  
  
His first brush down Erik’s shoulders is easy enough, slick with water and soap: he lathers up the suds in his hands and drags his fingers down again, taking care to rub it into the nail marks he’s left on Erik’s back from last night. It must sting, but Erik doesn’t say anything.  
  
“I’d like to see David after breakfast.”  
  
There. A bargain. And another pass of his hands down Erik’s back, fitting to his sides with careful refrain from bearing down and actually grabbing hold.  
  
As relaxed as he was before, Erik now tightens up. His hands twitch on the edge of the bath, poised to let go and allow him to turn toward Charles, but he must think better of it at the last moment. “I was thinking we could spend the morning in bed.”  
  
Sex, then. What a surprise. But… an outright “no” will get him nowhere. This will need to be framed carefully, skillfully: he’s already given Erik something he wants, and Erik will thus be feeling the weight of that debt. Not nearly enough, though: there will have to be something else, some other sort of motivation. So, what will matter to Erik? Something—oh, what if… “My children will always come before you, Erik. And not just David. Any children _we_ have will be just the same.” Any children _we_ have. See? Accepting that it’s going to happen, already thinking of ways to care for the child they will have _together_.  
  
Hook, line, and sinker: “I would never ask you to neglect our children in favor of me,” he answers, pushing the slightest amount back into Charles’ hands, rippling the muscles of his shoulders as he, for lack of a better word, _fidgets._ Erik Lehnsherr, fidgeting. Who would have thought?  
  
“I know.” Not really, but it sounds quite lovely to say it, and that’s precisely what he’s going for. “And I can feel that David’s fussy this morning.” Which is a bold-faced lie: checking would mean touching David’s mind, and while that’s easily possible, his son always picks up on his mental presence, and if he wasn’t fussing before, he most definitely would be after he detected his father’s touch to his mind. “He’s not used to being away from me for so long.”  
  
Another swipe over Erik’s shoulders, rubbing the soap in. That ought to do sufficiently: he steps back and then to the side, setting the soap on the floor and nudging his hip against the bath’s wall, positioning himself perpendicular to the wall and to Erik, though that doesn’t last long, since Erik is already turning to face him. “He’s gone several days without you before,” Erik points out. But he must doubt—he’s hesitant about how he reaches out and fingers a lock of Charles’ wet hair. The action smacks of distraction and uncertainty; he rolls the lock between his thumb and forefinger, concentrating his gaze on that, rather than on Charles’ face. “When you sent him away.”  
  
Do not duck away from that touch to his hair. Let Erik indulge if he so chooses. It’s a necessary sacrifice, when Erik is _this close_ to giving him what he wants.  
  
“And how was his mood when you found him?”  
  
Ah, yes: the value of logic isn’t dead _quite_ yet.  
  
“Miss Pryde can handle it.” But he doesn’t sound certain, and his gaze remains fixed to the right of Charles’ face. Surely he must have wrung all the water out of that one piece of hair by now.  
  
 _Please, be reasonable_ , he almost says, but swallows it back—too condescending. That’s not the approach he wants. He’ll need to be less heavy-handed. Something more… “She shouldn’t _have_ to handle it.” Plaintive. There we go. Better. Yes, and that turns Erik to him, expression alert and lined with worry. Good. That tone says everything better than words could: _I’m upset, I’m worried, I just want my son, give me what I want, Erik, won’t you give me what will make me feel better, Erik?_ “David shouldn’t be left to fuss just because I’m too busy to take care of him.”  
  
At last, Erik releases that lock of hair, lowering his hand to perch on Charles’ shoulder. He rubs his thumb distractedly over the dip in Charles’ collarbone, sweet and fond, but his gaze drills holes with its intensity—such an odd contrast. “It isn’t healthy for him to be so dependent on you.”  
  
“Maybe not. But he’s been like that since… it isn’t easy for a child, losing his mother so early.”  
  
A little bit of a verbal punch isn’t always remiss either, and that would be it: you damaged my son, or at least he was damaged by what you didn’t stop.  
  
Open mouth, closed mouth, going to speak and thinking better of what he was going to say, and ending up gaping like a fish: one fish, two fish, guilt runs through the fish. Somewhere, Dr. Seuss—and gods only know how _that_ managed to survive from the Old World—is probably turning over in his grave, and it’s not a rhyme he’s about to recite to David anytime soon, but it does very accurately describe the discomfort on Erik’s face.  
  
Come on, then. Come on and say it….  
  
Erik swallows and looks away. “Fine. We’ll go pick him up after breakfast.”  
  
Yes. Check and _mate_.  
  
If he could just ignore the rock of guilt in his gut, it might even feel like a proper victory.


	21. Chapter 21

He gets David back in a rush of happy squeals and drooling smiles, the smell of washed baby overwhelming him the moment that David dives into his arms, latching his tiny arms around Charles neck and clinging. Of all the things he loves with his son, these simple moments, where he knows his child needs him, may well be the most cherished. Two years ago, he didn’t know the sheer pleasure of sinking his face into his son’s curls—colored like both his and Moira’s, but more wavy like his own—and _breathing_ , holding on to the frighteningly small body against his own and understanding exactly what it is to be a father.  
  
Nothing will ever be better than this.  
  
“I missed you, Love,” he whispers, drawing back and finding himself immediately treated to a long string of garbled syllables. At a little under one year, David is primed to begin spitting out a word here or there, but he hasn’t quite managed just yet.  
  
No matter: he’ll talk when he’s ready, and it’s not particularly difficult to understand what he wants. A damn sight easier than understanding most people, actually: point and babble outstrips passive aggression and insinuation any day. If he lived in a world where communication was as simple as it is for his son, he’d never have had to learn to play those games, and he’d likely be a far better person for it.  
  
Someday David will have to learn to play those games too. It’s not something he especially wants to consider.  
  
“How was he?” he asks Kitty, propping David on his hip and catching hold of his little hand when he tries to pat it against Charles’ face. Of all the odd habits—but it’s something David has picked up lately, and since there’s no indication that he’s trying to slap, there’s been no real reason to dissuade him, beyond the obvious annoyance of having a toddler’s fingers in one’s face.  
  
Kitty need not answer that question. The deep circles under her eyes and her weary little smile—after being up all night with a baby, the effort required to bring the mouth into a full smile is a thing of fantasy—are answer enough. “Missed his daddy,” she answers, shrugging.  
  
Erik, who’s waiting off to the side, leaning against the wall, shifts his weight to his other foot. Fidgeting. As much as he may try to deny he does any such thing, the proof is fairly conclusive.  
  
 _Why_ he’s fidgeting promises, of course, to be a good deal more important than Erik’s attempts to deny that he does it in the first place. Guilt, for one—that much is obvious, and it trickles down through the bond. Charles had said David would be cranky, and Erik is the one who separated them for the night—plenty to feel guilty about, right there. That he recognizes it, though, is a bit surprising.  
  
“Did he sleep at all?”  
  
“He dozed off right around dawn.”  
  
“Ah. Just enough to power him through right now; he’ll crash in an hour so and become a right terror for the rest of the day. Something to look forward to.”  
  
The temptation to pointedly focus in on Erik is nearly overwhelming, but the idea of what would happen if his gaze were met is enough to deter him.  
  
“Best of luck then, Milord,” Kitty tells him, grinning. She can grin _now_ , since she won’t have to be the one to deal with the tantrums. Figures—not that he holds it against her. Volunteering in the first place to watch David was kind of her.  
  
“Well, Darling,” he says, turning his attention back to David with a quick jostle that has David bouncing on his hip and squealing happily, “what do you say we leave Miss Kitty to get some rest?” Poor girl looks as though that’s the best news she’s heard since yesterday. “Thanks, Kitty, I appreciate it.”  
  
“You’re welcome, Milord.”  
  
Giving one last nod, he swings David around, pivoting himself too, and heads off for the door. The telltale noise of footsteps on the floor behind him is assurance enough that Erik is following.  
  
Truthfully, it’s nice to know that, in some respects, Erik will always be trailing after him, rather than leading. There’s not much of a distinction, but the sense of it is important, purely because it staves off panic: he can talk himself into this, into a method of comfort where every step and every breath doesn’t feel squeezed back in on him, until his own body has become his cage. He’s not at that point yet. He won’t be. He _won’t._  
  
“That poor girl looked like she’d been up all night,” Erik points out, drawing even with Charles and matching their strides. It’s particularly noticeable against the tile: their own little song beat, down the hallways of the palace.  
  
“I think she had been.”  
  
“It’s not healthy, you know.”  
  
He _does_ know. As much as he loves his son, this level of dependence could become dangerous. It isn’t now, not when he’s so young, but… the idea of letting David out of his sight is chilling. That won’t get better as he gets older—not when it feels like this. Maybe if it were a normal level of protectiveness, but this is beyond that, and there’s little point in denying it.  
  
Knowing doesn’t mean much, though, when the thought of doing anything to change it—letting David out of his sight—sets his teeth on edge.  
  
Not healthy at all.  
  
But, for now, misdirect: “I’m well aware that staying up all night isn’t healthy, thank you.” Deliberate misunderstanding is a brilliant tool.  
  
Even if the person opposite knows it for what it is: “You know that isn’t what I meant.”  
  
“And _you_ know that I don’t want to discuss it.”  
  
“And when _will_ you want to?”  
  
“Never.”  
  
“You’ll have to eventually. If you don’t address it, it’s going to be harmful to David. Do you want that?”  
  
Being this well known by his opponent is beyond infuriating. Erik knows all of his word games, his turns of phrase, his misdirections—and, more importantly, he knows very well about those things that _do_ matter, enough to produce results.  
  
That doesn’t mean he has to concede to Erik’s sense right this moment: a good point made can still be deferred. “Not right _now_.” Much thanks for the bend in the hallway, that throws Erik off his steps for a handful of seconds. Though it’s not much, it’s breathing room, and he’ll take what he can get.  
  
Besides, David _is_ fussy. That could be because he hasn’t slept, but, more likely, he’s feeling his father’s discontent. Even a regular child would be able to sense the tension hanging between him and Erik. Not much of a surprise that his son has taken that to a new level: squirming when he isn’t allowed his father’s full, undivided attention, and, when that doesn’t work, deteriorating into thrashing out with his tiny fists, catching any available surface.  
  
Too bad that’s his father’s face.  
  
“No, David.” Catching his son’s tiny hands, he pushes them down, holding firmly when David starts screaming, flailing about and generally demanding to be set down. Granted, if he were to be set down, he’d be screaming just the same seconds later, demanding to be picked back up.  
  
“Quite a set of lungs on the kid.”  
  
And—right. Because this day hasn’t been completely ruined, Logan needs to make an appearance. Better yet, he must have been looking for them: popping out into the corridor behind them, and—one glance is enough to tell: he’s disheveled, not in the sense of clothes askew or hair out of place, but simply with the look of a man who’s been harried by some variety of problem.  
  
For gods’ sake, though: this is _Logan._ Does Erik truly need to glue a hand to the small of Charles’ back? Logan is hardly about to snatch him away. Though, bonding instincts, and the bond is so new: that would account for the persistent and disconcerting desire that he feels to drop back against Erik and press up into that touch. Seeking comfort and protection from a guardian, as though he’s a weak creature in need of minding. As though he hasn’t ruled a kingdom on his own for years and years.  
  
All because of biology.  
  
To hell with it all. This—the bond—it’s the worst kind of _horrible._ To think that people do this _willingly…._  
  
“Logan,” Erik greets, not unpleasantly, though very pointedly without obvious amicability. It would seem he doesn’t want Logan to stay. No surprise there: Erik doesn’t play well with others under the best of circumstances, and, with a new bondmate, the odds for good-nature decrease significantly. “You’ve been looking for me?”  
  
Logan rolls his eyes. “Yeah, obviously.”  
  
One does have to admire the man’s gumption, although it’s less amusing when there’s a baby screaming through the whole scene. At this point, it would be nice if they could take this somewhere where he could set David down, try to placate him, possibly put him back to bed and attempt not to think on the havoc that will wreck on his son’s sleep schedule.  
  
“And did you possibly consider that I wouldn’t _want_ to be found the morning after my wedding?”  
  
Which is really just akin to announcing that he hoped to spend the morning in bed. Or, failing that, still exclusively with his new mate. How charming.  
  
It might be worth sending Logan a thank-you for interrupting Erik’s plans. _If_ the man would bother to take the time to read it, as disagreeable as he is.  
  
Logan scowls. “Wasn’t exactly something that could wait.”  
  
“I told you to handle anything that came up this morning.”  
  
Logan is acting as Erik’s proxy? Interesting. Logan seems more hired muscle than politically minded. He’s certainly an odd choice to make decisions in Erik’s stead. That’s odd in and of itself, actually: that Erik would be willing to delegate. Did he truly want a morning after so badly?  
  
Logan—the man must be _insane_ —rolls his eyes. Honestly, quite mad: it’s probably possible to count on one hand the number of people who have been allowed to show Erik such disrespect without receiving quick and painful retribution. “It ain’t quite that simply, _Your Majesty_.”  
  
Never before has an honorific sounded so much like an insult. If not for his son making his eardrums bleed, he might be willing to take the time to admire Logan’s verbal evisceration technique.  
  
Erik hardly appears so impressed: “Then, if you would be so kind as to _tell me_ , rather than making excuses for your incompetence.”  
  
No need to be rude. But… if Logan and Erik initiate a brawl in the middle of the hallway, this day may begin to look up, which would be quite a welcome change. Logan’s scowl is such that violence does seem to be a viable possibility. And Erik—in public, when _isn’t_ he scowling?  
  
Doesn’t seem quite fair that he’s turning that on Logan, though. Logan might be disagreeable, but there’s a hell of a lot that’s owed to him over the last couple of days. That mess with the blindfold yesterday, and it’s possibly true that Charles wouldn’t have gotten out of bed much at all while Erik was away, if Logan hadn’t initiated that fight….  
  
Erik should be at least passably kind to him, for services rendered.  
  
“Wouldn’t say it’s _my_ incompetence,” Logan mutters, throwing his arms across his chest. “More like your generals not knowing their heads from their asses.”  
  
Generals? Where? That could be any place, but Erik doesn’t ask, which means it’s someplace _specific_ , likely somewhere on which Erik has been concentrating. The Upper North? His hold there must remain somewhat shaky, given how spread out the towns are. Much harder to consolidate. And if Erik’s generals don’t have a very exact, well-executed plan, that particular territory could be ten times as difficult to hold.   
  
If it _is_ the Upper North, something important must be occurring: Erik mutters out a curse and rakes a hand through his hair before chancing a look over at Charles, though he quickly drags his gaze lower to examine David. “This won’t be a quick fix,” he concedes, sounding bland—and it isn’t a question. “We might as well…” A sigh. “Follow me.”  
  
Hand still on Charles’ back, Erik nudges him forward, back in the direction of their rooms. Surely he isn’t thinking to bring Logan along? While they do have a perfectly serviceable outer room that will work for guests, Erik jealously guards his privacy, and—hadn’t he wanted a quiet morning?  
  
Though, with David, there’s nothing quiet about it.  
  
“Hush, Love,” he tries again, teasing his fingers through his son’s hair. It’s still baby-fine and whispy, but it’s starting to come in thicker. David isn’t going to look exactly like either his parents, or so his features promise: those big blue eyes and the wavy brown hair are all Charles, but his facial structure is far more reminiscence of Moira. It would be better if he looked like his mother—something to remember her by. Maybe he’ll be built more like Moira’s side of the family: her father was a large man, tall, unlike Charles, and it would be good for his son to inherit that. Small gives people ideas, makes them think a lack of height is akin to an easy target, and, more than that, that they’re meant to be tucked into an embrace, coddled—  
  
Or he might only be projecting. Before Erik, no one ever expressed sexual interest in the fact that he’s on the smallish side.  
  
But, then, he only ever courted women….  
  
“I doubt he’s going to settle, Charles,” Erik says, patting him lightly on the small of his back where, yes, his hand remains.  
  
“Yes, thank you. I do so need all the advice on parenting that you’ve collected in the few days you’ve been exposed to an infant.”  
  
It works as the rebuff it’s meant to be: Erik startles, losing a step. Pity that he navigates it flawlessly, and, ultimately, it’s as though he never faltered at all: and, unfortunately, he looks firmer for it—for being insulted and tested and, really, who even knows anymore? It’s a knee-jerk reaction: Erik speaks, and the reply is caustic.  
  
Not smart. He’s supposed to be… what he _needs_ to be. Appealing. Convincing. Anything that will bend Erik into seeing things his way.  
  
And what he _doesn’t_ expect? For Erik to _smile_. “It’s nice to know that you do feel _something_ when you’re this biting.”  
  
What?  
  
Erik taps at his own temple. “I can feel your apprehension.”  
  
“Gods almighty,” Logan mutters, irritated, from behind them, and—it would appear they’ve slowed, or else Logan has simply sped up, brushing by the both of them with an annoyed huff. Leave it to Logan to lead the way to someone else’s room. “That kid’s screaming at the top of his lungs, and he still makes more sense than you two.”  
  
Oh—and, Erik is satisfied, at… it must be at that. Not being understood. He would be, wouldn’t he? It probably makes him more defensible. It always was something of a point of pride for him: alienated from those around him, as though he saw something they didn’t, had experienced more of life, was _more_ than the concerns of everyday life.  
  
When it comes right down to it, that’s rather how he regards humans: in his mind, they simply don’t understand him, and they can’t, because he is something more than they are.  
  
“Anything I can do to help?”  
  
A trail of mucus is making its way down from David’s nose. It would figure that he has nothing to wipe it with. “I don’t _want_ your help.” He’ll have to grab a handkerchief when they make it back to the rooms. Shouldn’t be far now. It’s a bit disconcerting to know that the layout of the palace is still something of a mystery.  
  
That will need to change. Even if it means asking Erik for a tour, knowing the layout of the building is paramount. That’s knowledge that is necessary for just about any undertaking. And, if he could discover the location of the prisons….  
  
All it would take would be one guard. Darwin must be here, and—Erik had said he could see his men in a social capacity. They’ll be heavily watched, without a doubt, but Darwin knows him, and could catch his signals. They’d made up a new set after Erik to replace the old system that Erik knew. It isn’t as familiar or efficient, but it would do: he could communicate the plans of the palace to Darwin, and if Darwin could organize the other men….  
  
They round the edge of a hallway: even the corner isn’t enough to shave Erik away from his side; they squeeze uncomfortably closer, with Erik brushing up against his side in order to avoid hitting the wall. Gods forbid he’d do the simple thing and drop back away, in order that they might have more room. “It’s normal to need help,” he insists, digging his fingers into the cloth of Charles’ shirt. Simple linen, not meant for anything more complicated than walking across the palace to go pick up his son. If there were any chance that someone outside the palace staff would see it, Erik would have no doubt insisted that he dress in something suitable.  
  
“Bully for normal,” he snaps. “You _know_ what I think about normal.”  
  
“Let it never be said that you’re shy about sharing your opinions.”  
  
Nor should he have to be.  
  
At this point, it’s almost a relief to have Logan cut them off, entirely unapologetic: he barges in between them, taking the lead, and with the newly increased demand for speed, both he and Erik forgo their conversation in favor of keeping up with Logan.  
  
Unfortunately, silence isn’t guaranteed: David keeps up his squalling, face a mess and looking quite as though the world is ending. By the time they finally reach him and Erik’s quarters, David’s face is a surprising shade of scarlet.  
  
This would most definitely be one of the less appealing sides of fatherhood.  
  
“I’m just going to put him back to bed.” He’ll pay for it tonight when David doesn’t go down easily at bedtime, but David’s mood isn’t something that seems manageable at the moment, not when there’s still an ache in Charles’ backside; and Logan is waiting with news; and Erik is there, always there, and never prepared to offer a moment of reprieve.  
  
With any luck, whatever it is that’s brought Logan here, he and Erik will be able to hash it out before David slips back off to sleep.  
  
\-------------------  
  
“Did he go down all right?” Erik asks nearly twenty minutes later when Charles emerges from the bedroom to find him seated with Logan at the very same table where the wedding planning fiasco had been hosted. Though they’re seated, dividing the space of the table into thirds with one area left for Charles, neither of them is relaxed: Logan may be sprawled over the chair, but he’s tense about it, and woe to anyone who startles him: despite appearances, the taut line of his muscles suggests he’s primed to jump at a moment’s notice. Erik is far more blatant about his vigilance, perched upright in his chair, back at a perfect right angle to his thighs, which are locked together and show no signs of movement. His hands are just as exact, pressed together and resting, along with his elbows, in a line on the cherry hardwood surface of the table. It’s only his head that is out of line at all, turned to face Charles.  
  
“No,” Charles answers honestly. “But I suppose it’s justified: he has a lot of reason to fuss.” Much like his father: does anyone truly think he wants to spend his morning in a meeting, seated in a wooden chair? A cushion would be nice—and Erik would jump to get him one if asked. Unfortunately, that would require admitting his discomfort to Erik, which is bloody well never going to happen. Erik, though—every now and then he shifts. Barely, but the movement is there under the iron self-control. Erik may hide it better, but comfort seems to be evading him as well.  
  
Unfortunately, retaining the option to inform Erik of his discomfort may no longer be an option: the concern—and, damn him to hell, the _satisfaction—_ that Erik levels his way when contact between his backside and the chair draws a reaction—admirable, surely, that he kept it as subtle as a thinning of his lips, _please, don’t let Logan have noticed_ —leaves little room to doubt that Erik understands his predicament.  
  
So, misdirect. Ignore Erik, ignore how he’s opening his mouth, moving to speak, and head him off before he can follow through. “What can we help you with this morning, Logan?”  
  
 _We_. Because it’s that easy to combine two identities. Gods almighty.  
  
Erik’s fingers twitch. Oh, he noticed that one tiny word, did he? He’ll be pleased. But, in the scheme of things, it’s a small concession, and perhaps it can be used to win something later.  
  
Logan grunts. “I’ve said my piece already to Lehnsherr: I don’t think you should be here for this, but he’s dead set on it, so we might as well get on with it.”  
  
Don’t look at Erik. _Don’t_ look at Erik. And never say thank-you. Hearing this information is no more than his right. “I assure you I’m quite competent.”  
  
Logan snorts. “Not what I’m worried about, Xavier. But if you fuck this whole thing over just because you _can_ , it’s gonna cause me a hell of a lot of trouble that I don’t need.’”  
  
Ah. Well. Sensitive information, then. No promises on what he’ll do with it, which Logan clearly notices, rolling his eyes and angling back toward Erik. “Your funeral, _Sir_. _”_  
  
Charles flicks his gaze toward Erik. “Well?”  
  
Catching his expression, Erik matches it, volleying back with a steely stare of his own. “Westchester is mounting a defense. I _could_ just wipe them out: they aren’t particularly well equipped. As you know, the area isn’t a dry one: they’ll have water, but most of their food comes from outside the city. If I cut off the Hudson and their supply line, I could easily surround the capital and starve them out. The rest of them are too scattered throughout the region to mount much of an effective effort. And a siege to the capital would take a fraction of my forces, especially with the onset of winter: anyone who wants to try to break through a siege is going to have to contend both with my soldiers and Westchesterian cold. Why don’t _you_ tell me how you think that will end?”  
  
Not well. In the summer, there would be some hope of hiding out in the marshes along the Hudson, but in winter that becomes significantly more difficult, and, if the soldiers are badly supplied, illness will kill off far more than Erik’s men would. The city itself has decent fortifications and would be able to hold out, and, as Erik says, water isn’t a problem: the city has multiple wells rather than one central source, so poison would be out of the question on a large scale. But Erik is right: he has such superior numbers that he needn’t do anything more than wait quietly until starvation sets in. Without Erik fighting a war on other fronts, he has the luxury to spend time solely on Westchester. For him, the trick will be to insure that no other places follow Westchester’s example. But, given that he controls the press, that shouldn’t be particularly difficult.  
  
“You agree then,” Erik presses when he doesn’t receive an immediate answer, “that what they’re doing is pointless?”  
  
His leg is cramping; he stretches it out under the table, shoving his foot against the wooden stanchion. “I wouldn’t say _pointless_.”  
  
“Futile?”  
  
Anyone with half a mind for strategy would say that. It’s not a battle Westchester can win. Not without help. If the Upper North or Boston were behind them… but if Erik still has those regions firmly in control… but _does_ he? Westchester fell the first time around because Erik was able to surround them by taking Boston from the inside. But, if he no longer had that hold… “No more than trying to force me into telling you what you already know.”  
  
Good to see that he can still amuse Erik: that muted smile, how he drops his head to the side, straining the tendons in his neck and rippling them under the skin. Once upon a time, Charles’ mouth would have gone dry at the sight of skin stretched over muscle. And that slight sheen: Erik is sweating, and it’s turning his skin clammy, mostly up on his neck, right under his jaw where a quick lick would catch that saltiness of the moisture—  
  
Once upon a time is very close behind him, apparently: he runs his tongue over the insides of his cheeks, calling up enough spit to pretend he never lacked it at all.  
  
Too bad there’s a bond to keep him honest now: Erik’s head snaps up so quickly that he probably gave himself whiplash. See, this? _This_ is how bearers win wars: this shock and awe of lust, rippling down the bond. Erik locked in on him simply from the basis of that one little spike of lust.  
  
And all it cost Charles was his pride.  
  
But… it’s also cost Erik his concentration.  
  
Narrowing his eyes, he grabs onto Erik’s stare and, very deliberately, looks away. Not. Interested.  
  
Stew on that one awhile, Erik.  
  
Instead of giving Erik the time to answer, he pushes on with his analysis: “They’ve picked a very bad time of year to launch a resistance. But you knew that. And they probably weighed the time of year against the cost of allowing you the winter to entrench yourself more securely into the region. Which I’m sure you also knew. You could figure all of this out for yourself. Really, I’m not certain what you want. ”  
  
Not in terms of Westchester, anyway. The brightness of Erik’s eyes, the slight slackness to his mouth—there’s no mistaking what _else_ he wants.  
  
Logan mutters something uncomplimentary under his breath. “C’mon, Kid, don’t be stupid: he wants you to call them off.”  
  
When put that way… “He knows better.” Looking at Erik, though, who hasn’t moved, save for pressing his fingers a bit more firmly together, whitening the tips— “Don’t you?”  
  
“Apparently not,” Erik murmurs. His gaze _burns_.  
  
“In what warped version of reality could you possibly think I would help you put down a rebellion? Even an ill-advised one.” Or is this the point where Erik threatens his men again? Pity that it has a chance of working: his chest is already constricting, tight and hot with anger, enough of a nuisance that he rubs his hand over it, dragging the cloth out of place and into wrinkles and bunches.  
  
All shields are raised: Erik won’t catch anything from him, with the exception of his emotions, which would suggest that Erik is simply able to guess at his thoughts—but it’s no less disconcerting to hear himself proved right: “The only threat I’m making is this: if you don’t help me diffuse this non-violently, I _will_ put it down however else I need to. It won’t be pretty: it will be the kind of aftermath that involves dragging thousands of starved corpses out of a wasted city. And I think you know me well enough to know that I wouldn’t take pleasure in that.”  
  
That’s true: Erik can be ruthless, but he doesn’t take joy in killing those with whom he doesn’t have a particular grudge. Saying that, though: his jaw may as well be welded shut, and the best he can do is stare down at his hands and refuse to meet Erik’s eye. His foot thumps idly against the wooden stanchion of the table, over and over, merely for the sake of movement.  
  
But Erik isn’t done: “I have no desire to deal with orphaned children and starving refugees. Is your determination not to help me strong enough to bring about a reality where I’ll have to?”  
  
“ _You_ created this situation in the first place. Don’t expect _me_ to bail you out of it,”  
  
Erik shifts in his chair—must send the blood running, after being still so long—leaning to the side and bracing his elbow on the table, hand limp at the end of it, hanging as he studies Charles. “I understand that. But your son is going to inherit that region. _You_ led that region for a good many years. I’d say you have a stake in this just as much as I do. Was I wrong to consult you?”  
  
He _knows_ better. It’s emotional manipulation to even ask that question.  
  
And the only way to deal with that is either to stonewall Erik… or to run his _own_ game. Though… not quite yet. Agreeing to help too easily: Erik will see through such a transparent effort.  
  
“You were wrong to assume that I’d automatically find helping you to be the lesser of two evils.”  
  
Erik frowns, wrinkling his forehead up and pinching the lines at the corners of his eyes. “We’ve gotten to the point where you’re accusing me of actual evil?”  
  
Yes, but—not like it sounded. Erik isn’t _evil_. Severely misguided, yes, but—  
  
The sound of Logan’s palm slapping down on the table wipes away the charge from the air—or at least slices through it. “For gods’ sake, I don’t have time for this. Sort out your issues on your own time. If you want to help, Xavier, then help, but don’t draw it out and turn it personal when it doesn’t have to be. If it weren’t Lehnsherr, you’d be smart enough to know the best option when you saw it.”  
  
As if it’s that _simple_.  
  
But, yes, Logan is right: to save his people, this is the best option. Preserve them until he can find a way to slip free, liberate Westchester’s soldiers, and help the region properly. And that _will_ happen. With every new word out if Erik’s mouth, the determination to find a way solidifies.  
  
At this point, he may as well be a vector, pointing off in two different directions: as body and instincts become more and more attuned to Erik’s proximity, force of will—the desire not to sink down and become the sum of his instincts—shores itself up. One half of him wants to curl up in bed with Erik and indulge in a relationship that stretches back years; the other would like nothing better than to see Erik knocked to his knees. Is this what having a split personality feels like?  
  
“You’re asking me to tell my people to stop fighting. And I somehow don’t think I’ll be allowed to tell them to wait for more favorable circumstances and then have another go.”  
  
As tense as things are, Logan’s still enough in possession of himself to enjoy the attempt at humor: he huffs, but the corner of his mouth pulls in a small smile. For such a house of a man, he has a surprisingly endearing smile when he bothers to show it.  
  
“It would be the same result in the spring,” Erik points out, dropping his hand to the table and dragging it back, leaving smears over the dark wood. “Too many dead. A price none of us wants to pay. Why the hell can’t we agree on that and find a way to avoid it?”  
  
And here has always been the problem: Erik simply cannot consider that he might be wrong, or that other people might be right to find him to be so. “Because that might be worse than the alternative!”  
  
Shoving back against the chair, he slams his shoulders into the backrest, setting the whole thing to tipping precariously, smacking back onto four legs seconds later with a loud thud. “Some things are worth dying for, Erik, and you _know_ that. It’s only that we don’t agree on what those things are.”  
  
“They won’t gain _anything_. They’ll die, and the region will be secured, and it will have meant nothing at all. Their deaths won’t gain a victory. It won’t _mean_ anything.”  
  
Nothing? It will mean _everything_. To every son, every mother, every father and sister and child, it will mean everything when their loved one is dead. It could mean a changed life: it could mean Edie Lehnsherr’s son warped into something his mother wouldn’t recognize by the sheer weight of grief. There will be more people like that. Does Erik think he’s the only one who’s ever suffered from seeing a parent killed in front of him? Those deaths may not win a war, but they could start another one. They will _ruin lives_.  
  
Which is why—take in a deep breath, and maybe this will be easier— _which is why_ this cannot happen, if it can be avoided. War should always be a last resort.  
  
And it should never be allowed to come about simply for the sake of one man’s dignity.  
  
Dignity that is undeniably already tattered.  
  
And… he isn’t merely trying to play Erik any longer, is he? This isn’t about holding off long enough to allay suspicion. Somehow, it always arrives at this: Erik, pushing him to the point where his chest tightens and his mind strains.  
  
“And if I say yes, and if I help you, what then?” Erik will use him, that’s what. In so many ways, he’ll use him, but these people will live, and that makes it worth it, surely. They’ll be alive for another attempt—a better attempt. “How many humans are going to find themselves second rate citizens—“  
  
“Just as many as will find themselves second rate citizens _after_ a siege on Westchester!” In a fit of motion, Erik slams his hands down on the table, rising out of his seat and throwing his weight down on his hands, leaning over the table.  
  
That’s true. It’s undeniably true.  
  
The decision is already made, anyhow: it’s only his pride. His guilt. Whether he wants to live with telling people that Erik is their best option, even if it’s only going to be temporary. Whether he wants to be remembered as someone who was swayed based on his biology, who fell into line because Erik fucked the rebellion out of him—and that’s what people will think.  
  
And it’s going to _hurt._  
  
But, gods, he’s been thrown through windows, seen his mother drink herself to death, watched his sister desert him, and witnessed the fall of his kingdom—his pride is the only thing left, and he’s clinging to it like a child. If he were really a king, he’d do what was best. Honor—what is honor when everyone is dead? What is a legacy? What _is_ it, and what could it possibly _matter_?  
  
“Fine.”  
  
Nothing. No quick snap back, no string of praise.  
  
Erik must not have heard him. Or… no, he did. But his face has slackened, jaw falling open with the tilt of his head, worse when he ducks down, working for another angle: the angle won’t change the words. It’s humiliating to see him try.  
  
There it is again: that worry for self-worth. That humiliation. Something he cares about so much, isn’t it? He’d best let go: Erik’s going to be pulling it out of him every day from now on.  
  
“You—“  
  
But Erik doesn’t have to rub it in, damn it. “I agreed. You have what you want. Do you need to rub my face in it?”  
  
That works as well as a slap: Erik jerks backward, plopping back into his seat. “I wouldn’t do that to you.”  
  
No? It must be nice to live in a reality where it’s possible to really believe that.  
  
“Then nod or give him a handshake and stop gawking at him like he’s done a back flip.”  
  
Logan.  
  
They’ve reached the point where _Logan_ is the voice of reason.  
  
Erik probably doesn’t so much as hear Logan’s point as he hears _him_ —finds himself distracted by Logan’s utter rudeness, that is, and, strangely, his brash form of sense.  
  
Of course, that doesn’t mean Erik isn’t annoyed—or so says the nudge against the bond. Irritation and relief and… love?  
  
“I will not give my husband a _handshake_ ,” Erik bites out, scowling.  
  
Scowl like that and your face might stick: his mother said that when she was sober enough to notice his facial expression. Though, as he’d gotten older, she’d spent so much time refusing to look at his face that it hadn’t been an issue: she couldn’t bear how much he looked like his father.  
  
But, no, no handshake. Though, Erik does push back from the table and stalk to Charles’ seat, pulling the chair out with him in it. Negotiations have, apparently, concluded. So nice to be informed in such a… forceful fashion. But at least they’re over. Already they’ve lasted too long.  
  
There’s a headache threatening, and he can—and does—raise his fingers to knead at his temples. But the headache isn’t going anywhere. Between his son’s crying and this mess, it’s a wonder his brain hasn’t leaked out his nose.  
  
“Are you all right?’  
  
Fingers materialize at his temples—or, no, up in his hair actually, holding him in place while Erik starts up rubbing divine little circles, over and over against his temple, up over his forehead—oh, oh, that’s—that’s very nice, actually, really horribly invasive, but the pressure is releasing…  
  
“I’ve just agreed to help you subjugate my own kingdom. No, I am _not_ fine.” It doesn’t come out as biting as he’d like. And, somewhere along the line, his eyes have slipped closed.  
  
“You’re doing the right thing.”  
  
“It benefits _you_. You’d hardly tell me otherwise.”  
  
“If it were harmful to you, I would.”  
  
But he and Erik don’t agree on what’s good for him, and therein lies the problem.  
  
Thankfully, they can agree that the attentive massage against his scalp is a very nice thing indeed. As bad as his headache is, it fades under the insistent pressure of Erik’s fingers.  
  
He ought to pull away before the experience gets any better.  
  
“Would you prefer to take David with you when we go to Westchester, or would you rather he stay here? Kitty could watch him.”  
  
He smiles wryly. “Not much question which you’d rather I choose, then.” As much as Erik says he wants to treat David as his own, that filial devotion never seems to outrank the possibility of a little time alone together with David’s actual parent.  
  
Erik’s hand slips around to the back of Charles’ head, fingers working at the knot at the base of his skull where his muscles seem to have decided to clench tight enough to imitate bone. “I’d prefer we take him with us, actually, but I’m not sure how advisable that would be. I’m told routine is good for babies, and he’s been uprooted an unhealthy amount lately. But it’s your call.”  
  
Oh, is it? It never was before. “I’d like for him to come. “  
  
“Then he’ll come.”  
  
Though his eyes are closed, he doesn’t need to see to recognize Logan’s disapproval when it comes: “Westchester is a war zone,” he says, voice gruff and irritated. “And you’re going to drag your kid back into that, just so you can sleep better knowing he’s nearby?”  
  
“The alternative is leaving him in the care of people I don’t trust.”  
  
But Logan isn’t done: “You don’t trust that girl you left him with last night?”  
  
Not as much as he trusts himself. When it comes to David, he trusts _no one_. “Until you have a baby, don’t you dare tell me—“  
  
“I _do_ , Xavier. I have someone to look out for. And I hate to tell you, but a couple more years don’t make it any easier. Marie’s sixteen, and I still have to make myself walk out the door. You start refusing to let your kid go now, you ain’t gonna do it later.”  
  
Like hell it’s the same thing. People don’t care about Logan’s… whatever she is. People don’t want her dead—not like they’d want to see David dead, or hurt, or kidnapped. The son of Westchester’s king could have any number of uses.  
  
“My son is a _baby_ ,” he spits out, slamming his eyes open and jerking his head out of Erik’s hold. He catches a quick flash of irritation in Erik’s eyes—enough to see that it’s solidly directed at Logan, rather than himself—before fixing his attention on Logan. Erik’s hands plummet down to latch onto his hips, holding him steady, but making no effort to stop him when he angles his body toward Logan and starts snarling out his response: “He _can’t_ take care of himself. You think I’m paranoid? My wife was assassinated. People _do_ want him dead—”  
  
Logan tosses his arms over his chest. “And you think you’re gonna be able to stop them? You think, just by keeping him with you, he’ll be safe?”  
  
“It’s a start.”  
  
“It’s really not.”  
  
“Fuck _you_.” Those hands on his hips have a function now: holding him back, though it doesn’t take much. He could never take Logan down in a physical confrontation, and while a mental thrashing is always a possibility, somehow, they haven’t hit that point yet. A mental attack—there’s no going back from that. And maybe he doesn’t hate Logan _that_ much right this minute.  
  
But Logan just shrugs. “Fine. Bring him into a warzone. If you think none of those humans hate you just for being a mutant, then go ahead and put him in the line of fire.”  
  
“Or leave him here in Genosha where I _know_ he’s in danger?”  
  
“In danger in the most heavily guarded residence in the known world? Have a little faith in my abilities, Xavier. You think I let just anyone waltz into this suite?”  
  
Logan will be staying here? It seemed a foregone conclusion that he’d be coming to Westchester.  
  
“What? Surprised?” Logan certainly isn’t: he rolls his eyes and uncrosses his arms, stretching and rolling his shoulders until they pop. “Lehnsherr’s more than capable of looking after your sorry ass; someone needs to stay here and do security for the capital.”  
  
“I don’t _need_ looking after.”  
  
“Pretty sure you do.”  
  
Until this point, Erik has been blessedly silent, but there’s a limit to everything, and his actions would indicate they’ve reached it:  “Stop it. You make your decision, Charles, but do it on the basis of how things really are, and not the lie you’re telling yourself: you hate letting your son out of your sight, and you’re terrified to let him go somewhere where you can’t immediately reach him. That’s what this is about. And I’m not blaming you. You have a number of very good reasons to see things this way, but—“  
  
“For godsake.” By this point, Erik ought to expect violence. There’s absolutely no reason for him to stumble when Charles catches him in the chest with a well-placed shove. But he backpedals, grinding to a halt a few feet away, arms outstretched where they’ve been yanked off Charles’s hips. “Don’t touch me. And _don’t_ lecture me. You think I can step back from this? This is my _son_ , Erik, and there are so many things—so many—“ He swallows down a breath, reigning things back in, which would be so much easier if not for the pulse in his throat, and the sense that he’s been clubbed upside the head by his own emotions and ingrained impulses. “If my son dies—if—“ Another breath, shakier than the last, worse when Erik takes a step back toward him, mouth slack and open and driven by worry.  
  
“He’d be safer here in Genosha,” Logan says from behind him, quieter this time. The mockery has gone from his voice, and in its place is something that sounds horribly like pity.  
  
Nice that _Logan_ can reassure him. As if he has any true reason to care for David’s welfare. Duty is not enough—not for his precious baby boy. “You don’t have a clue,” he snarls over his shoulder, which is obviously a mistake: it gives Erik a chance to take the last few steps, to latch his hands around Charles back and to pull him in close, locked against his chest with his arms pinned down to his side. A living, breathing straightjacket.  
  
Fuck, this was not supposed to happen. This—it’s panic, pure and undiluted. All the pledges of keeping himself under control are irrelevant when it is his _child_.  
  
“Logan’s right,” Erik tells him quietly, tipping their foreheads together. “I’d also rather he come, Charles, and not just because he’s my son too. But because I know what being apart from him will do to you. And if you tell me to put him on that train, I will.”  
  
Not much in that answer makes sense. But, as convoluted as that reasoning is, there’s an earnest ache resting at the bottom of the bond, right at the spot where their minds connect. Erik isn’t lying. He’s not presenting a clear argument, but he isn’t _lying._  
  
“I can’t tell you not to bring him.” There’s no guarantee he could pull himself together if that’s what happens—if David is left behind. He sent him away once with his troops. Not again. Please, never again.  
  
“But do you think it’s in his best interest to bring him?”  
  
No, _no_. No, it isn’t in his best interest, or no, he won’t answer? No, no, no. It’s all a gigantic pressure, bearing down on his skull, drawing a whine up out of his throat, bad enough that he leans forward and grinds his forehead into Erik’s chest, panting for air.  
  
Panic attack. This is absurd. This is a _mess._  
  
“I hope getting what you wanted was worth fucking him up this badly, Lehnsherr.”  
  
That sounds like Logan. And he isn’t broken, thank you, _shut up_. Insurmountably stressed, and driven just about to the edge, but—he jerks his head back up, and, though he can’t stop panting for breath, he swivels in Erik’s arms to face Logan. “I’m _fine_. Don’t talk about things you don’t understand.” Except Logan has seen him curled in a nest of blankets, refusing to get up for anything but David. Logan has seen him at his lowest, and anyone with any sense who has witnessed that would have put two and two together and comprehended that maybe, possibly, he’s a bit unbalanced. “Erik hasn’t—hasn’t—“  
  
Arms tighten around his waist, drawing him back away from Logan. _[You have to tell me what you want, Charles.]_ A frantic scrambling of his own limbs, caught by Erik, who spins him around and tucks him close, rocking him.  
  
When did it get this bad? It’s a wash of chaos, with his mind alive with an army of little jolts of spark. Nothing is settled. If this is the kind of world his son was born into, what’s left? But that can’t be. David has to be safe, like Moira wasn’t.  
  
 _[My son. I want my son to be as safe as he possibly can be.]_  
  
 _[And what do you think is the best way to make that happen?]_  
  
To have David with him at all times. It must be that. But it’s not. Logically, that’s not right. It’s only his own fears and insecurities, and that sharp stab of momentary knowledge that will fade the second the decision is made, but—David would be safest here in Genosha away from him.  
  
That doesn’t mean he can say that. Physically, he can’t say that. His lips open and close, smacking and pinching in close, only to be tossed open again, gaping and scrambling for air that he can’t get.  
  
 _[No. I can’t tell you. I can’t even breathe.]_  
  
Hands, framing his face, rocking, rocking, though his eyes have fallen half-closed, and Erik’s face blurs. “You’re panicking, Charles. Just—you need to calm down. It’s all right. Take deep, slow breaths.”  
  
And how the hell is anyone surprised about that? After last night, and the wedding, and the horrid bandage still around his wrist, that was changed without looking after the bath, because he _couldn’t_ look—how would anyone be the least surprised that this is where it breaks, over a perceived threat to his son?  
  
“I bloody well—“ He chokes, gasping. _[I’m not, I’m not.]_  
  
“And that’s what you get when you truss someone up like you’re gonna slaughter him, toss him down on an altar, and call it a marriage. Good going, Lehnsherr.”  
  
Nice that Logan thinks he should have waited, should have waited to see if Charles were crazy, if there were any other problems…  
  
Erik just won’t give up his hold, regardless of how hard Charles pulls and twists. “That’s not what he meant, Charles. He doesn’t think—”  
  
“I don’t think you’re crazy.” Logan’s voice. Soft, somehow. Sorry, if he even has the right to be that anymore, when he helped Erik do all of this. “No one could handle all this shit at once without his brain pushing back. I told Lehnsherr he ought to wait, marry you once the bond was good and set, but there was no chance in hell he’d listen, since he’s _Erik Lehnsherr_ , and anyone else can take their advice and shove it up their—“  
  
“Shut up,” Erik spits, rocking side to side, over and over. He’s rhythmic about it, turning Charles with him, alternating his weight onto each leg, pivoting slowly on his feet, until they’re rocking in small, loose circles. They wouldn’t be out of place on a dance floor. “I thought it would be worse to drag it out. I’m sorry if that was the wrong decision, but everything’s going to be fine. The worst part is over, and you’re exactly where you should be now, and _it’s going to be fine._ ”  
  
He’s going to be like those bearers who take to their beds after childbirth and never get up again. The few he’s seen have death in their eyes at the best of times, and absolutely nothing at the worst. Sometimes, it’s like they aren’t there at all anymore. Mad. Shells of what they were. Lost in their own minds. Why not him? He’s defined by his mind. Surely it will be worse for him.  
  
Abruptly, he goes limp.  
  
“Charles?”  
  
“Go to hell.” But he’s not acting like he means it: he can’t recall how, but at some point his hands have reached up, curving to the sides of Erik’s neck and holding on. It’s a little gummy between them: sweat on sweat, and skin catching, but it grounds him, and, for the time being, his lungs open up and allow in little fluttering breaths.  
  
“I didn’t mean—“  
  
He digs his fingers into Erik’s skin, experiencing the sharp jump of the pulse under his hands. “Shut up.”  
  
Erik does.  
  
“Logan. Get out.”  
  
The noise Logan makes is halfway between a laugh and a scoff. But he listens, and that’s what matters. “Sure, Xavier.” His footsteps are loud against the floor—too loud to be natural. A grown man shouldn’t be given to stomping, but this is _Logan_ —although, he hadn’t seemed particularly upset, so it may be that he’s doing his best to make it obvious that he’s leaving—that he’s doing as Charles said.  
  
Logan is, it would seem, a far more complex individual than he originally let on.  
  
“Well, that went well,” Erik mutters once the door closes and they’re left alone.  
  
“I told you to stop talking.” But it comes out mumbled against Erik’s chest—slightly awkward, when his hands are still up near Erik’s face, high enough that his fingertips are brushing the edges of Erik’s hair.  
  
Under his ear, he can hear Erik’s heart beat.  
  
 _Tha-thump. Tha-thump. Tha-thump._  
  
He closes his eyes and listens.  
  
He can do this. He can fight Erik, he can love Erik; he can fight a person he loves. And… he can breathe.


	22. Chapter 22

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Does anyone know how I can make my own comments stop contributing to the comment count? It's seriously annoying me.

Within hours of their discussion—if it can be called that, when only one person’s opinion mattered—Erik has them bundled up and en-route to Westchester. There had been another point of panic over saying good-bye to David, and it’s nothing short of a miracle that they’ve made it to the train at all. As it was, it took a bit of well timed physical intervention by Erik—but—  
  
Somehow, they’re here.  
  
“Raven will be coming along on a later train,” Erik tells him, stretching out against the cushions and wedging himself upright with one leg propped on the seat, pressed against the backrest. He wastes no time settling Charles down against him, back to chest, precisely as the train begins to pull out of the station.  
  
Though the consideration briefly flares to life, there’s little point in resisting, and a certain type of appeal exists in the warmth of Erik’s body, and in how, when Erik wraps him up in his arms, he can sink down and imagine that he’s hidden. Erik might hurt him, but it will be unintentional, probably not physically, and, for the moment, no one else will.  
  
“I presume she’ll be staying in Westchester indefinitely?”  
  
Erik nods, brushing the bottom of his chin against Charles’ hair. “As regent—“  
  
“I don’t want to talk about it.”  
  
Miraculously, Erik allows for that.  
  
So, silence instead.  
  
Because, really, what is there to talk about? Erik won’t change his mind, and Raven—she will _never_ be an acceptable choice. She’ll have to be deposed. If energy is going to be channeled into thinking about her sitting on Westchester’s throne, spending that energy thinking about how to get her _off_ the throne is a better bet. Add that to the list of topics for thought: free the soldiers, depose Raven, re-gain control of the region—it’s all quite a tall order.  
  
Besides, silence is _never_ for long when it’s the two of them in a confined space: they’ll move onto something else quickly enough that the topic of Raven can be avoided for now.  
  
It’s not particularly sensible, Erik’s need to keep the conversation up between them. Erik hunted members of Shaw’s government for years before he took on Shaw directly: he’s a man who’s used to working alone, who is accustomed to not hearing his own voice for days on end.  
  
Plus, before their fallout, silences between them had also been easy, sometimes prolonged, with the two of them basking in the pleasure of the other’s company. Losing that is one of the things most regrettable about their parting; and their reunion has done nothing to rekindle that talent for silence.  
  
“Do you remember when I killed Shaw?” Erik asks eventually, probably not more than two minutes later.  
  
That’s a hell of a topic change. Bizarre, too, in that Erik’s posture hasn’t changed in the least. No stiffening, nothing. “That’s a difficult thing to forget.”  
  
“You nearly bled out, holding him still so I could kill him.” His hand wanders down Charles’ leg, rubbing over the place where the scar is. That scar, which mostly represents how lightly he got off: a few minutes more, and that would have been a killing blow. “That was one of the two worst moments of my life.”  
  
“And the other?”  
  
“Watching my mother die.”  
  
That admission sends a bundle of emotions skittering down the bond, and Charles jerks, jarred by them. There’s too much to properly comprehend, and perhaps it’s because Erik is touching him that he can feel so clearly, but—  
  
Erik’s sadness is leaking through.  
  
Oh. It’s—is it supposed to feel this raw? Erik has always been relatively closed-lipped about his past. It had taken him the better part of four months before he was willing to divulge anything beyond the most basic of facts, and, even when he’d begun to talk, it had often been fragmented, leaking into conversation at the oddest times, and only in snippets. There had never been a moment when Erik had presented any sort of linear narrative.  
  
And he’s never recounted the moment when his mother died.  
  
A soft kiss is pressed to the side of Charles’ neck. “I can feel you thinking,” Erik murmurs, almost languidly. “What is it?”  
  
The urge to brush the topic off is almost overwhelming: hearing Erik’s past makes him human, makes him sympathetic, and already it’s far too easy to let himself sink into Erik’s warmth and personality, and to see the layers of him. No one is ever precisely simple, but, when facing an enemy, it’s best to think so: relate too much, and you’ll let a man accomplish atrocities, simply because you know the path that brought him to that point—know that he too was once a victim… and it’s difficult to fight a victim.  
  
“I realize I’ve never told you what happened when she died,” Erik admits, stroking his fingers over Charles’ stomach. And damn him for knowing too much, and for being so perceptive—but that’s not Erik’s doing either. Charles squirms: _he_ let Erik in, let Erik know him, gave him the tools to read him this well. “Is that what’s bothering you? Would it help if I showed you?”  
  
No. It would make everything worse.  
  
“You don’t need to show me.”  
  
“Of all the people in the world, Charles, you’re the only one who has a right to demand it from me.”  
  
“I’m not sure that’s true.”  
  
Erik huffs. “In your mind, it might not be—but you’re wrong. You’re still convinced that our marriage was nothing more than a powerplay. And you’re wrong about that too. I love you. I married you because I _love_ you.” He tightens his arm—not painful, but more of a light hug about the waist, and, as embarrassing as it is, Charles leans into it, tense, yes, but not rejecting the touch either. “I’m as bound up in you as you are in me, and everything about me—you have a right to know. I couldn’t deny you that: you may not understand, but the power you have over me is…” He trails off, resting his chin on the nearest bit of shoulder he can reach. “You’re my husband, and that is a partnership I will honor.”  
  
Partnership, and honor. They’re vaunted concepts that have fallen by the wayside in practicality during the recent days: odd that Erik would invoke them now. But… he’s only referencing the personal, isn’t he? This isn’t a matter of state. This is Erik Lehnsherr, and his past, his emotions, and his thoughts. When put like that, it isn’t so difficult to believe that Erik would indeed think he’s putting them on equal footing.  
  
And maybe that—the promise of looking Erik in the eye again as an equal, as his best friend and partner—is why he’s answering before he thinks better of it.  
  
“She’s your mother, Erik. You don’t _owe_ anyone that. Not me, not anyone. Trusting someone enough to share a recollection that painful—that trust is a gift, not an obligation.” A white elephant, yes, but—that doesn’t make the gesture itself any less meaningful, does it?  
  
The rumble against his back is a little stilted, and Erik, pressing his face into his neck—it doesn’t feel so much like affection as it does like hiding, Erik trying to bury himself away from the world in the warmth of Charles’ skin. “But, Charles… I _want_ to give you everything.”  
  
As though everything is so simple to give. He’d say so, but… it’s easier to only close his eyes, to wonder if, somehow, for Erik, it _is_ that simple. “If you want to tell me, I’ll listen.”  
  
A pleasant burst of warm air on his neck. “It’s not a very pleasant thing to give, I’ll warn you.”  
  
“It means something, Erik. And things that really _mean_ something are hardly ever entirely without pain. It doesn’t make it any less a gift.”  
  
He chuckles. “A gift you’ll accept? How unusual. And how like you to only take it if there’s pain laced in.”  
  
“Don’t tease.”  
  
“I’m _not_.”  
  
“You shouldn’t make light of your history. You know better than anyone else that a knowing a person’s background can give you power over them.”  
  
“I suppose you’re right. But you still don’t seem to understand: you _do_ have power over me, Charles. Not in the ways you want, but… even you recognize the power of knowing someone’s thoughts and memories. You’re a telepath. You damn well _should_.” Shifting slightly, Erik leans more firmly back into the cushions and crooks his knee upward—the one on the outside of the seat—bracketing Charles firmly between it and the wall. “I can think of no better wedding gift than that: anything personal you want to know about me, you ask, and I’ll tell you. Today, tomorrow, whenever: my history, my opinions, what scares me and what I love, hopes, dreams—any of it, I’ll tell you, should you ask.”  
  
By all the gods, that is—that is—his chest is tight, and he can’t do more than stare directly ahead, over toward the other side of the compartment, mind caught in a loop over the depth of that promise.  
  
Everything. Everything that makes Erik _Erik_.  
  
It isn’t strategy, and it’s not a promise to give him battle tactics or details of upcoming political maneuverings, but those things were never Erik anyway. They’re the things that will win Charles a war, but they weren’t what kept him up at night in that year he’d spent at Erik’s side, hunting Shaw. They weren’t the things that he’d desired so deeply that he’d been convinced it had branded down into his very bones.  
  
But what Erik has just offered him: these things _are_.  
  
“I—“  
  
“Is that acceptable?” Erik asks, nuzzling the underside of his jaw—but his tone says that he already knows. And he’s pleased.  
  
“Thank you.” Anger or not, bitterness or not, there is no other genuine answer he can possibly offer to what Erik has given him.  
  
“You’re welcome.” He says it so sedately, and without the usual smugness that he carries when he’s won something. It’s… almost like peace. “You’re the only one I’ve ever wanted to tell. Since my mother died, you’re the only one.”  
  
How did Shaw ever see fit to tarnish something this perfect? Erik, at his core, open, like this, and, as a child, this must have been him, wanting nothing more than to protect his mother. How did Shaw look into the face of that and do him harm?  
  
“I’m sorry,” he whispers, and—he’ll regret this later, of course he will, but he turns, nuzzling into Erik’s cheek. “For what he did.”  
  
That’s all it takes. Whether Erik was waiting for something like that, or whether the memories were simply lingering at the surface and are now boiling over, it can’t be said for certain at this point, but, as the memories rise up and slide over his vision, Charles’ last thought is for how it doesn’t matter.  
  
It just doesn’t. Erik is showing him regardless. And, gods, he _wants_ it, this thing that Erik is giving.  
  
 _/“Erik Lehnsherr, is that correct?”_  
  
 _Shaw sits at his desk, looming over the room like the cougars that used to sit perched in the rocky outcroppings, just above their village, waiting to prey on any livestock that might wander away. Most days, that had been Erik’s job: minding the livestock and keeping it close to the village. But he’d never feared the cougars the way he fears Shaw._  
  
 _What he wouldn’t give for a cougar now, in fact—anything, to go back to his town, tucked away in the mountains, before Shaw’s people came and dragged them in, dragged them behind barbed wire and into the clutches of men with swords and clubs, all because they’d dared to practice a religion that is no longer allowed._  
  
 _Men like Shaw are afraid, Mama had told him. Afraid to let the people think, because if they think, they will disagree._  
  
 _But Mama never told him what to do if he had to look that fear in the eye—not that he’s doing so well at looking Shaw in the eye right now. Those eyes are terrifying, like there’s nothing behind them. Just cold, trying to suck his soul out._  
  
 _“It’s rude not to answer a question, Erik.”_  
  
 _Somehow, it doesn’t seem like a good idea to point out that Shaw must know the answer to his own question if he’s already calling Erik by his name. “Yes, Sir, that’s my name.” Or maybe Shaw doesn’t care if that’s really his name at all. Anything handy will do._  
  
 _“Excellent. Thank you, my boy.”_  
  
 _He’s not Shaw’s anything. Except maybe his enemy. He can be that. He_ will _be that, when this man is responsible for ripping him away from his home. Vati is dead because of this man, shot trying to barricade the door of their cabin long enough for Erik and Mama to slip out the back. If it hadn’t been for the bullets, it might have worked—but no one expects bullets. Only Shaw’s men have those anymore, and usually not even then. They’re so rare—how were they to know that raiding their little village would be deemed important enough for bullets?_  
  
 _“Now, Erik, my guards tell me that they saw something… promising this morning.”_  
  
 _He fights the urge to take a step back. He won’t. He won’t give this man the satisfaction._  
  
 _“Is what they say true, Erik?”_  
  
 _It doesn’t matter what he says. They guards have already told Shaw what they’ve seen. “I don’t know how I did it, Sir. I never have before.”_  
  
 _But Mama had been crying last night, curled around him in their tiny shared bed in the barracks, doing her best to keep him warm. There are always the sounds of people crying around them at night, though it doesn’t usually last long: people are too exhausted to waste time crying when they can snatch a bit of sleep. But Mama had been crying, and, then, this morning, when she’d almost dropped that pail, he’d known, if she did, the guards would hit her, and—he didn’t want her crying. He hadn’t wanted—_  
  
 _“Oh, I believe you, my boy,” Shaw says easily, straightening up in his desk chair and offering a smile so lacking in warmth that it’s really just a spasm of his lips. “It’s quite common for abilities to manifest around this age. And metal—you’ll be particularly useful.”_  
  
 _Useful. He doesn’t want to be useful to_ Shaw _._  
  
 _“I don’t understand, Sir.”_  
  
 _Shaw laughs, folding his hands together on the desk. “Then let me be clear: you can’t stay here. A mutant, tossed in with humans? Out of the question. You’ll be reassigned to a training center.”_  
  
 _What? No. Mama—he can’t leave Mama—_  
  
 _“My mother—“_  
  
 _“Is a baseline human, Erik. You are something better, something_ more _.” He laughs shortly, but his gaze doesn’t waver. “And, besides, it’s innate, my boy: humans will always fear us. Your mother would, in time, be no different. And I will not allow someone with such potential to be so weak as to cling to a human. You are meant for better things.”_  
  
 _No, Mama would never. Who is this man, to think he knows better, that he knows him and Mama? Mama will love him no matter what he is or does, and if this man thinks he’ll believe otherwise, he is surely insane. Disgusting, that was already clear, and warped, but does Shaw really think everyone in the world is as twisted as he is, to so easily believe a lie that horrible?_  
  
 _He straightens up, squaring his shoulders as best he can—always stand up tall, when someone is looking down on you, Vati had told him—and meeting Shaw’s eye. At thirteen, he is hardly a match physical for Shaw, but that’s not really the point._  
  
 _“I won’t leave her.”_  
  
 _Shaw’s mouth twists in an exaggerated frown—but, as odd as it seems, Erik could swear there’s a hint of glee behind the expression. “I thought you might say that.” Any normal person would sense the tension of the situation, but Shaw seems to be enjoying it, posture languid and relaxed as he reaches out, snatching the bell on the edge of his desk and giving it a little shake._  
  
 _The door bursts open, and Erik snaps around, half toward Shaw and half toward the door, because if there’s one thing he’s learned in the camps, it’s to never turn your back to anyone._  
  
 _But nothing in the camps ever taught him what to do in a situation like_ this _._  
  
 _Mama is in the doorway, held securely between two burley men, and with the sort of look on her face—no, that was how she looked when they were breaking the door down, killing Vati, that look that says she_ knows _, that she expected. It isn’t precisely resignation, but it’s close enough that it chills him, and he lurches forward, pitching into her arms with a wordless cry._  
  
 _It doesn’t last: he’s yanked away and tossed backward a few steps before he can get much of a grip, and Shaw’s irritated tutting echoes in the background, as though Erik is a disappointment—but an expected one._  
  
 _“Mama—“_  
  
 _As occupied with Mama as he is, he hasn’t been paying attention—a near-suicidal mistake—and Shaw’s smack to his face takes him by surprise. The blow lays him out, and he smashes down to the floor with too much clattering for any human: there should be flesh, muscle, fat, but all that’s left is bone, striking floorboard._  
  
 _“Erik!”_  
  
 _“Mama,” he whimpers under his breath again, already seeing the inevitable unfolding, but it should be different, must be different. There_ must _be a way._  
  
 _Shaw’s shoes come into his view, and his gaze latches onto them. Better than the man’s face. Leather can be terrifying, and it hurts in the form of a strap, but the man bearing that leather is far more dangerous._  
  
 _“We’re going to play a game, Erik.”_  
  
 _Don’t look up, don’t look up—but he can’t help checking on Mama. He shouldn’t have: there’s no comfort in the stricken expression, in how she’s strained to the limit against the men’s holds, but not actively fighting, because… she_ knows.  
  
 _What is it that she knows? He knows too, somewhere deep—he can feel it—but recognizing it means accepting it, and—no, he won’t do that._  
  
 _“If you move the gun before I count to three, I won’t shoot your mother.”_  
  
 _A gun. He looks up now, staring down the cold metal in Shaw’s hand, held loosely between his fingers. The guns shot Vati. They weren’t supposed to have guns, but they_ did _, and_ please, _not Mama too…._  
  
 _The gun levels out in the air—watching it, it feels more like the gun, rather than Shaw moving—angling in his mother’s direction._  
  
 _“No!”_  
  
 _He’s hardly gotten to his knees before he’s launching, scrambling at Shaw, but—he doesn’t get anywhere. Shaw’s foot flies out to meet him, catching him hard in the side of the face and slamming him back down, breathless, to the coldness of the floor._  
  
 _“One.”_  
  
 _No, no, no, if he can’t—but fighting Shaw isn’t working, and that’s one down, two more, and—but the metal—how does he move metal? He did it before, but it’s not—he can’t—_  
  
 _Tipping to the side, he fixes his eyes on Mama, who stares back. She’s hardly blinking. “_ Alles ist gut _, Erik,” she murmurs. Yes, that’s Mama, his fierce Mama, throwing their culture—their crime—in their captors’ faces right up until the end._  
  
 _The_ end _._  
  
 _“Two.”_  
  
 _Frantically, he reaches out, screaming through every inch of himself, begging the metal to obey, but he doesn’t know how to call it, and it doesn’t answer. And he’s scared, so scared. No, please, no, this can’t—it can’t—please, please—“Please, don’t, please—“_  
  
 _“Three.”/_  
  
Charles slams forward as the sound of the gunshot echoes in his ears. He’s gasping for breath, and, for once, Erik’s arms aren’t restrictive, but merely supportive, hands clasped to his waist and holding him through the worst of the gasps.  
  
Oh, gods, Erik, Erik—  
  
To do that, to a child. Just a little boy, and Shaw had made him watch, made him feel responsible.  
  
“I—“ Breathe, take a deep breath, Erik already knows, and he doesn’t need to hear it replayed. This—showing it—must have been— “Erik.”  
  
“It’s all right,” he murmurs, and, with a gentleness that’s almost startling, he slides his touch around to the front of Charles’ stomach and patiently guides him back down until they’re leaning together. That helps, actually, feeling Erik’s slow breathing against his back. He can regulate himself to that.  
  
When he finally does get himself back under control, the situation is too full of ache to break into with something as flimsy as words. What he saw…  
  
Shaw was a sadist, there’s no doubting that. To do what he did to a young child—it takes a special kind of twisted to accomplish that.  
  
 _[Erik.]_  
  
A spark of surprise echoes down the bond.  
  
 _[I hate killing. You know I do. But… Erik, I’m glad he’s dead.]_  
  
It tickles when Erik nuzzles into the back of his hair, wuffing out a breath deep into the locks. _[He almost killed_ you _too.]_  
  
And, suddenly, the gravity of that has taken on a whole new meaning. Seeing one’s friend die would be awful under the best of circumstances, but what Erik must have felt to see him be cut down by _Shaw_. “I’m _sorry_.”  
  
“Because she died? Or because _you_ nearly did?”  
  
“Both.”  
  
“If I died, Charles, would you grieve?”  
  
This is not a line of reasoning that’s going to bode well for a lengthy train ride. Already, the compartment is stuffy, oppressed by the growing thickness of emotions and topics. And, yet, he’s tired—still shivering from the memory—and lying presents as unmanageable, when all he wants to do is keep on being held. Contradictory? Yes, but caring is too difficult. “If I’d managed to kill you when you came to get me in Westchester, I would have killed myself immediately after.”  
  
That’s the very best answer available.  
  
And, evidentially, it says everything that needs saying.  
  
Erik’s chest expands with the force of deep breath, raising Charles a few inches and dropping him back down when all the air rushes out. It isn’t immediately replaced. Rather, Erik takes to brushing his fingertips down Charles’ thigh, directly over the scar—and turning his face into Charles’ neck, spreading a chill there from the coldness of his nose. “Do you want to be a martyr so very badly?”  
  
“Not particularly.”  
  
“Then stop trying. Charles—“ He shakes his head, burying more deeply against the skin where he’s pressed his face. “I could break you. _Mein gott_ , I could _break you apart_ , and keep you away from everything else, keep you safe—“ A choked-off breath, and then he sighs, gentling his touch and shuddering. “I _would_ , if I loved you any less.”  
  
Declaration or not, he’s doing a frighteningly good impression of exactly what he says he won’t do: what would happen if he were actually _trying_? And yet—Charles brings his hand up behind his head, catching at Erik’s face, and tracing the contours. The bridge of his nose; the dip under his eyes, where the soft skin would tear like tissue paper if he pressed hard enough; the curve of his eyes, fanned with surprisingly soft lashes; and Erik’s mouth, that parts under his touch and lips tiny kisses to his fingers as Charles traces the slightly chapped skin, catching his nails on the tiny peels.  
  
“I have never encountered anyone as incomprehensible as you,” Erik whispers around his fingers. “But if we understood our gods, they wouldn’t be worth worshipping, now would they?”  
  
He scoffs, but at the same time he closes his eyes, tipping his head fully back into Erik’s shoulder. “I’m not a deity. Don’t be ridiculous.”  
  
“I’ve never had as much faith in anything as I do in you.” Erik catches the edge of the pointer finger in his teeth, biting lightly over the pad, scraping as though he can wear the fingerprints right off. “And I damn near worship the ground you walk on.” The words come out slightly muffled, but the meaning is clear.  
  
“You shouldn’t. I’m afraid my step is rather uncertain these days. Oh—”  
  
The warm, wet heat of Erik’s mouth washes over the edge of his finger, where Erik has pulled it cleanly into his mouth and begun to run his tongue over the edges of it. That is—that is _good_ ….  
  
“Stop it.” It’s _too_ good.  
  
Teeth close over his knuckle—not hard enough to hurt, but enough to keep him there. Erik needn’t have bothered. He’s hardly trying to pull away at all.  
  
“Oh, gods, you’re—you—“  
  
Already, he’s plastering his free hand to the side of Erik’s neck—but, no, that had already been there. He’s only gripping harder, holding Erik in place behind his head, and, parting his lips, drifting out a sigh as he closes his eyes and settles back into the warm weight.  
  
There’s no question where this is going. But he’s warm and calm, and it’s better than the first time, with all that tension. If it has to happen—if he has to—if—it might as well be now.  
  
“Mmmm…” No need to move. Erik will move for him. All he needs to do is lean back, sink into the warm, comforting weight, and breathe. That simple movement tangles scents as he takes in air, and he inhales again, nudging Erik’s neck to chase after that familiar masculine scent that always lingered on the blankets and clothes that Charles borrowed from Erik while in the field. Earthy and with hints of sweat and metal, it sneaks over him and soothes, sliding into his emotions and drawing him down, down—  
  
Much better. Like this, he can breathe. A provider’s scent—simple biology—it’s unfailingly soothing to his bearer. That’s what this is—nothing complicated, nothing odd—and, in future situations, if he’s scared, he might even seek out something of Erik’s to wear. Never did he think he’d be a textbook case, but, leaning back, sinking against Erik—it winds him down, down—  
  
The first time is over, out of the way, done last night.  
  
Nothing to lose now but dignity.  
  
He slams the bond closed: this is happening, but it doesn’t have to be complete. A compromise, of sorts, which is about all that’s possible when Erik’s memories are beating at the inside of his skull. Closed bond or not, Erik’s essence is already inside his mind.  
  
“I—oh—“  
  
Fingers at his belt—but it’s Erik’s powers that unlatch the metal, flicking open the trousers and pulling them aside to expose him to the air. It’s cold; he drops his hand down to fumble for Erik’s, and he finds it, winds their fingers together, pulls him toward the opening in his trousers….  
  
Nothing happens right away: Erik dips their hands to the side, over Charles’ hip and then backwards, sliding down into the waistband and dragging his hand along the curve of Charles’ buttocks, parting skin from cloth as he goes along. “Pull them down.” It comes out as a whisper, damp against the side of his neck, and more so when Erik kisses his skin in the aftermath of the last syllable.  
  
“No.”  
  
So Erik does it for him, guiding both their hands, and using his free one to lift Charles up enough to make room for the cloth to slip down to rest against his thighs, trapping him. Like this—he can’t run like this, regardless of whether that’s what he wants.  
  
 _Does_ he want to?  
  
“Are you wet?”  
  
Charles shakes his head. A little. But not enough.  
  
“Will you open back up the bond? Let me hear what you’re thinking?”  
  
Another head shake.  
  
If the rejection bothers Erik, he must realize well enough that what he’s getting is already more than he can logically expect. Regardless of what he’s thinking, he doesn’t push, but goes back to kissing his way up Charles’ neck, eventually devolving into licking one long stripe, smiling against the skin when the saliva cools and—that’s good, really very good, and Charles shivers at the tendrils of sensitivity that pluck at his nerves.  
  
A shiver is more than enough to pull him back to those nights when he woke up, shaking with the remnants of dreams, staring at the canvas roofing and listening to Erik breathe.  
  
Having now divested him of the obstructing fabric, Erik sets him back down in his lap and goes to work on his own trousers, pulling his cock out once he’s pushed the fabric aside. He’s not completely hard, but enough that his cock prods, insistent, at the cleft of Charles’ ass, worse when Erik indulges himself—if that’s what it’s called when it’s mutual pleasure—and runs a finger over the slick wetness of Charles’ hole, teasing the skin and the sodden mess that everything is quickly becoming. For the time being, he ignores other more obvious matters entirely, which—Erik is doing that on purpose. Has to be, just to see Charles cant his hips upward, to fall back down, impaling himself on that one long finger.  
  
Feels good.  
  
“Your feeling is in my head,” Erik breathes out against him, grinning into his skin and nipping—ignoring the sharp twitch that engenders—hard enough that there will be a mark.  
  
But it’s tit for tat: Erik’s own overwhelming satisfaction is rushing up the bond too, leaking over until Charles is shivering and shaking, latching onto that emotion and dragging it around himself. That’s followed by Erik’s hand, cupping him around his hole, one finger still up in him, holding steady and letting Charles set his own pace, fucking himself on it—grinding down against Erik’s palm.  
  
There’s enough wetness now. More than enough, and Erik needn’t stretch him any more than he’d need to stretch a woman. Just—oh—just slide up in—that hardness   dipping lower, sliding down his cleft and down, down, down—both Erik’s hands now, lifting him up, letting Erik under him—  
  
Oh.  
  
A long, low moan drags up his throat and out past his teeth, and he tries to clamp down on it at the last moment, but he’s left only with the clacking of enamel and the clamping down in other places. Not where he wants it—it won’t silence him—  
  
But at least that has Erik moaning too.  
  
“You—you—“ Erik’s words break off, and he groans instead, burying his face in the nape of Charles’ neck. “Tell me when.”  
  
Never. And all at once. Please.  
  
But there’s something about this, sitting here with Erik inside him, large and stretching him—a little painful, but all the more real for it—while he pants, cataloguing the leftover physical discomfort from yesterday, and the rasp of clothes on his naked backside. Erik holds Charles’ hips steady, big hands spanning his waist—one hand wet from where he’s had his fingers up inside Charles—and ready to guide him in a rhythm at a moment’s notice, but waiting on him to call for it.  
  
“I… need a moment,” he grits out, closing his eyes. He has no purchase of his own: literally sitting down on Erik’s lap, legs stretched in front of him. This will surely leave bruises on Erik’s hips, taking all of his weight, though that never came up as a concern, and it’s unlikely that it will in the near future.  
  
“Of course.”  
  
“I—Erik—“  
  
“Yes. My Love, my, _mine_ —“ A kiss, up under his ear, in the sloping curve and dip behind the hinge of his jaw, where traces of sweat have pooled, and which Erik is doing his best to root out, kissing and licking.  
  
All those nerves—unbelievable.  
  
“I—“ He can’t hold still. That place behind his ear—too sensitive, too much, and he bows his neck, moving away, but Erik follows, nibbling, and Charles’ hips twitch of their own free will, muscles clenching on the inside. “No—“  
  
“Tell me when.” Erik’s mouth, whispering under his ear. But he’s waiting. Still waiting.  
  
“No. I—oh—this is—“ Whining, low and quiet, pained, and he squirms again, bearing down on Erik.  
  
“I want you to tell me.”  
  
“No—nrgh—“ Bitten off as the sound is, it’s still a groan, and there are spots dancing behind his eyes, he’s closed them so tightly. “No—“  
  
“Darling, you beautiful, beautiful man—“ Erik mumbles, offering the words straight up to his skin. “You’re incredible, stunning, so clever—“  
  
What every person wants to hear. Erik will give him everything any bearer could ever want. But what about what he, Charles Xavier, wants? A king, a person, more than a bearer. Not the time to think on this, not the time at all.  
  
No time.  
  
There’s never time.  
  
He tosses his head back against Erik’s shoulder, twitching and grimacing, but he can’t hold it back any longer. “Go.”  
  
And Erik does.  
  
The first thrust comes fast and strong, straight up into him, but missing the perfect angle—more enthusiasm than finesse, but that’s to be expected with all the energy Erik’s been building up and holding back. The movement is hard enough to lift Charles up, pinned on Erik like that butterfly he said he never wanted to be.  
  
One of his hands is still back by Erik’s head: it curls into his hair, yanking, dragging Erik further over the top of him. Erik lets him pull, growling out indecipherable nonsense, and digging his nails into Charles’ hips, scattering pretty little purple half-moons.  
  
Curled over Charles like the sweep of a comma—it can’t be comfortable, but he allows it, thrusting again, and then again. The second go is better, the third dead on. He doesn’t realize he’s crying for Erik until after the fact, until after his fingers have dug so deeply into Erik’s hair that there’s no going back, with his other hand locked around one of Erik’s wrists.  
  
“I—gods—“ He’s ruined. Totally ruined. His body, his desires—not the mind, though, not the will. It’ll be okay. Keep his determination separate, and maybe that will be easier, if he indulges physically.  
  
“ _Ermm_ … My love, anything you want—“  
  
It shouldn’t be so hard to figure out what that is. “Right _there_.” Yanking on Erik’s wrist gets the point across fairly quickly, and Erik lets him drag the hand to his cock. He’s thankfully quick on the uptake, curling his hand around it of his own volition.  
  
Yes, _there_ , much better.  
  
“Tighter.”  
  
Erik firms up his hold. Perfect.  
  
“Now _go_.”  
  
Oh, and he does. Keeps on fucking into Charles and jerking him off as he goes, twisting his wrist and—well, it isn’t perfect. Erik doesn’t know exactly what he likes, but it’s good, and—every little noise he makes—Erik listens, adjusting his hold based on the sounds.  
  
He’s never been studied before, but it’s happening now. Such a quick study. Dead level flawless, amazing—bloody hell—  
  
“Harder, harder—“ That’s his own breath, puffing against Erik’s neck, hand dropping from Erik’s hair, curling around the back of his neck. Not enough leverage with his legs to fuck himself on Erik’s cock, but enough to dig his heels down into the seat and rock backwards, slamming onto Erik precisely as Erik thrusts up, hammering him with twin sensations of contact. Yes, yes, yes _yesyes—_ “More—“  
  
And he gets what he wants. He may never rule anywhere else again, but this—by the gods, his demands _will_ be answered in bed.  
  
Not that Erik is objecting.  
  
One arm wraps around his waist, holding him steady, and driving into him, again and again, rocking him upward and catching him when he falls back down, skin slapping on skin—they’d look obscene to anyone who came in. Thank the gods for locks.  
  
“I’m gonna—gonna—“  
  
Teeth in his shoulder, biting through the layers of cloth—a jacket and a shirt, but he can feel the half-moon of Erik’s teeth clean through them—but Erik’s words are still audible, echoing his own: “Go.”  
  
 _Come_. It means the same thing.  
  
Ready, set…  
  
With a sharp cry, he rakes his nails down the back of Erik’s neck, bowing his back, and—yes, yes, exactly like that, Erik keeps on going, but— “Nnrgh—Erik—“  
  
“ _Yes_.”  
  
And they’re both coming, whiting out, gone, gone, gone—  
  
 _There._  
  
Just… breathe.  
  
Never was it supposed to feel like this, with a soft glow, and the haziness of languid limbs and half-masted eyelids; a sweet breath against his cheek and an affectionate kiss to match. He can breathe like this, held and silent, and wrapped in a world of gentle darkness, secure until he opens his eyes.  
  
But the earth does come back to meet them rather quickly.  
  
So, that’s what good sex feels like. Who would have thought? The first time wasn’t _bad_ , per se, but… he’s relaxed now, and drifting in Erik’s arms, without a thought—or not much of one—for how he’s hanging out of his pants and covered in his own mess—it’s easier than it ought to be. Comforting, almost, to focus his nerves in on the steady puff of Erik’s breath against his cheek, hot and a little sweet smelling. Everything smells like sex.  
  
This is what he’d wanted, back when they’d been hunting Shaw. This closeness. This ease.  
  
And even a fantasy should be allowed it’s moment—and he can fight reality soon, when he has to, and when things hurt again. Oh, he’s wrong, dirtied and wronged—wrong and wronged, what a thought, what an unpleasant consideration. And he will hate himself for it.  
  
But just… Not. Right. Now.  
  
Not right now.  
  
\--------------------  
  
Because they’d left so late in the day, the journey to Westchester necessitates they travel through the night. It’s not so bad: the cushions lining the seats are comfortable enough, and Erik is very careful with him, propping his own back up with several spare cushions and then coaxing Charles to sit between his legs and recline against him. Though it’s the same position in which they had sex earlier, it couldn’t be more different now.  
  
There’s nothing remotely erotic about this: Erik seems genuinely more interested in seeing him rest than he is in any repeat of earlier in the day. In fact, the height of his current level of sexuality culminates in brushing his fingers over the bandage on Charles’ wrist.  
  
They haven’t taken it off yet, beyond changing it, and looking—it felt wrong. The prospect alone ripped his stomach up and set the tatters to waving about in the midst of the shifting bile that feels as though it’s eating his stomach inside out every time he thinks on the possibility of looking at his wrist.  
  
At this point, there are other things to think on, anyway. Things like an unspoken appreciation for Erik’s musical talent, when Erik sings him that Hebrew song again, soft and under his breath, more to Charles’ hair than to the air, but it does the trick: it lulls him to the point of relaxation, and he closes his eyes and lets himself drift, until he’s pulled under, soothed by the song and Erik’s fingers petting through his hair.  
  
Sleeping soundly is essentially out of the question—no one sleeps well on a train—but he does achieve some measure of rest, and by the time Erik is shaking him awake, he’s dozed enough to bounce back into awareness relatively quickly.  
  
“We’re disembarking,” Erik tells him, jostling him with his knee, which—ah, yes, Erik would like him to sit up. Easy enough—and he goes, doing his best to ignore the twinge in his backside. Twice in two days. That is—well, this is the regret that he’d known would come, isn’t it? Later, when he has time, it will doubtless turn to guilt and self-loathing. Something to look forward to.  
  
“I’m—all right, yes, I’m up,” he grouches, made all the worse by the gravel in his voice, brought on by sleep. “I’m—do I look like I’ve been sleeping?” It would be the height of unprofessional to appear before his people looking as though he’s just rolled out of bed.  
  
“I’m afraid so. But it’ll fade.”  
  
“Damn it.” He rakes a hand through his hair, but half of it feels hopelessly pressed down.  
  
“It’s endearing, Charles. Stop worrying about it.”  
  
“It isn’t _stately._ ”  
  
Erik’s common sense doesn’t seem to have winked out of existence quite yet: if it had, he would almost certainly have said something about how it no longer matters. His blank stare is a dead giveaway that he’s working very hard not to project that thought, but so long as he doesn’t verbalize what he’s thinking, it can be ignored.  
  
“You look fine.” Not fine enough, though, or Erik wouldn’t feel the need to reach out and smooth the lines out of the shirt he’d picked for Charles this morning. It’s a deep blue and cut to fit close to his torso and arms, hugging his body down just to the point where it tucks neatly under his sword belt without covering any part of his backside. That’s left entirely to the equally fitted black pants, tailored to what must have been his exact measurements, so well do they fit. The only thing that’s really his own—not chosen for him—is his father’s sword, hanging off a dark brown leather belt that he’s had for a few years now. “Here, put your jacket on.”  
  
He wrinkles his nose in distaste. “Thank you, no. You can still see the stain.” Frankly, it’s a miracle that the jacket is the only casualty of this morning’s tryst. Erik took it to the bathroom and tried to scrub it, but there’s still a patch that’s suspiciously dark, and it may only be his imagination, but the smell seems to linger.  
  
Surprisingly, Erik concedes this one, tossing the jacket aside onto the seat. “Do you want mine?”  
  
The sex this morning was good; it wasn’t good enough to get them to the point where he’d ever deign to answer that question honestly. “No.”  
  
“If you get cold—“  
  
“Then I’ll remember the twenty-nine winters I spent in Westchester, recall that I’m far more used to the weather than you are, and I’ll feel warmer.”  
  
Erik snorts.  
  
 _“Really.”_  
  
Both Erik’s eyebrows twitch upward. “Or could it be that you’re being your usual less-than-cooperative self?”  
  
“I’m a picture of charm. Don’t we have someplace to be?”  
  
“Never more important than you, Darling.” But his eyes are dancing with pure amusement, and his mouth is too strained for it to be natural—more like he’s holding back a grin. He can afford that now, the bastard, since he’s just gotten laid, and—gods, there could be a baby. It is now twice as likely that there will be a baby.  
  
Erik has every right to be pleased.  
  
“Never more important than your endless endeavors to hound me into behaving properly, you mean.”  
  
“It _is_ very important that you’re well insulated when stepping out into—“  
  
“Go to hell. If you want to stay on this train you’re welcome to do so, but I’m leaving.”  
  
That’s a bit of an empty threat when the guards who are no doubt waiting will stop him before he ever sets foot outside, but Erik laughs and allows him the illusion, catching the back of his shirt when he marches for the door. The hold isn’t meant to stop him, but merely to pull him back where Erik can reach him—to force them to walk out together.  
  
Appearances are so very important, after all.  
  
“Why so slow?” Erik teases, brushing past him into the corridor.  
  
“Making sure you can keep up. You’re older than I am. It’s only fair.”  
  
“Five years older. Not that much.”  
  
Objectively not, but some days Erik strikes him as older than the universe itself, like he’s carrying the weight of the ancient days. With memories like what Erik showed him earlier, it’s perfectly understandable.  
  
As expected, there’s a guard stationed to meet them at the door to the train. That’s probably for the best: just from a glance out the door, it’s possible to see the large crowd that’s gathered, thronging around the train in a living flood of people. On a day when both their former king and their current conqueror are arriving, it’s a toss-up for whether they’re attending with good or ill will. The station is also uniquely situated to allow for this: it’s just outside the walled part of the city, where those who live in the parts of the town beyond the walls can gather.  
  
Better to find out now, actually, whether public opinion is favorable or not: it’s a habit to open his mind when approaching a crowd. Same as at the wedding or Erik’s arrival in Genosha—there’s a lot to be learned by listening, and the pulse of a crowd is a very useful thing to have when making speeches.  
  
This one, though—it isn’t the kind of thought he’s used to hearing.  
  
There is almost zero positive feeling emanating from the crowd. Pity, maybe, or sympathy if generosity is employed, but even those are negative emotions—albeit less… toxic than most of the rest of what he’s feeling. Because this crowd? Most of them are running high on a cocktail of hate and desperation. Not a good combination.  
  
Opinion in Westchester on Erik’s takeover is, very obviously, not favorable. Though, there’s some hate directed toward Charles too, somewhat over the fact that he lied about his orientation, but more concerning the fact that his lie brought Erik down upon them all. That’s the worst of it, really: the knowledge that Erik only ripped Westchester apart in order to obtain his bearer—and there is almost no doubt that Charles _is_ a bearer.  
  
All right, not pleasant, but fair—and, as Erik steps outside into the light, slipping to the side to allow him room to follow, he can’t help thinking that he’s probably earned that ire. But that miasma of anger is enough to choke his mind, and he’ll be pulling himself out of that now, thank you very much—  
  
No. Wait. That’s—it’s out of place. A concentrated dart of poison in the midst of a noxious substance, but—but—  
  
“Get _down_!”  
  
He slams into Erik as hard as he can, tackling him sideways and sending him careening into the ground, so forcefully that a skid of gravel sprays out to the side. Good thing, too.  
  
There’s a bullet in the wall of the train, where Erik’s head was seconds before.  
  
A bullet that, if Erik didn’t feel it, must not have been metal.  
  
Before there’s a chance for any of it to settle, he’s rolling, gathering his knees up under him and springing upward, hurling his mind outward for whoever it was, wherever—yes, _there_. No, this is not—whatever their grievances, this isn’t the way—and a quick blow to the mind has the person down, crumpling among the mass of screaming people who have been spurred into chaos by the crack of the gun.  
  
Where did he get a gun? They’re so carefully regulated these days.  
  
This is _madness._  
  
“Erik—“  
  
“Get down right the fuck now, Charles!”  
  
What? Oh—standing—not the best idea, but the man is down, and the screams, the panic—if they don’t—  
  
“I said _now_!”  
  
No choice anyhow, when he’s wrenched downward a moment later, shoved into the dirt so violently that his palms skid across the ground, scraping and scratching at the gravel. Ow—that—he didn’t need rocks in his skin, thank you. This is an overreaction. Someone needs to control the crowd, find the sniper—  
  
“Have you got a lock on him?” Erik shouts over his head. Directly over his head, actually: Erik’s body is covering him, pinning him and blocking him from anything else that might come.  
  
Someone barks out a confirmation off to the side, but it’s difficult to hear over the panicked bedlam blasting from the crowd of people. The sound of feet in every direction, bodies hitting bodies—a mass of madness, and he can’t grab every mind at once. This is why mobs are so powerful, when thousands of minds meld together on one primal level, and he’s a telepath, but no one is stronger than that many people united in one emotionally charged purpose.  
  
“I want him alive!”  
  
A state that won’t last long: Erik’s voice is ice-cold and lethal. He talked that way about Shaw too.  
  
Erik will kill the sniper. It won’t be a trial, and it won’t be justice: just a person lying in the dirt, helpless, and, if caught, probably tortured. That isn’t the way to do this. The sniper needs to—needs—if he can just find that mind again and tuck up inside it, glean the man’s motivations….  
  
“Let up—Erik, let me—let me up—“ An attempt to roll amounts to nothing more than an increased weight on his back, pinning him. Being pressed down squeezes the air out of his lungs in a low wheeze, but Erik ignores him.  
  
But… _there_. There’s that mind.  
  
The sound of shattering glass. The people are probably breaking windows, trying to get inside, away from the range of guns. It isn’t them the gunman was after, they needn’t fear—that’s so clear in the young woman’s—oh, it’s a woman—mind that she’s practically screaming it on a telepathic level. Everything about her is screaming, and if feels… like lightning. Like there’s lightning in her thoughts.  
  
If her mind would stay put for only a moment, he could get a hold—  
  
 _[Run]_ he pushes in her general direction. _[This place is crawling with soldiers. You need to_ run. _]_  
  
Has she heard? Did she--?  
  
There’s nothing for it now. Either she did or she didn’t. Everyone else, though: they’re in danger too, writing into a thoughtless mob. They’re too big to control, but if he can drift thoughts out to them, that might help.  
  
 _[You aren’t in danger. The sniper wasn’t after you. Go home.]_  
  
There’s a pulse of recognition from the crowd. It’s working. They’re _hearing_ him, and Erik isn’t going to check his memories of this, not when he thinks he already knows what’s happened. This is the perfect opportunity to push something across. It would never work at the speech, but _now…_  
  
 _[This is Charles Xavier. And I’m telling you, stop fighting. Pull back and regroup. Give me time to gather an army, and we’ll fight him off. But we need a plan first. Fight him now, and you’ll lose. Give me time. Tell everyone. Please. What I’ll say in my speech, it’s not forever. We’ll regroup and we’ll fight—]_  
  
Without warning, he’s yanked upward by a hand on the collar of his shirt, right at the same time as Erik’s weight vanishes. Erik doing the yanking, then. Surprise, surprise, and—“Oh, hey, no—!”  
  
The link with the minds of the mob has vanished, sliced away by the sudden jostling. But… they heard him. The message is out there, floating in their minds.  
  
There’s nothing more he can do now anyway, not when Erik is manhandling him away from the crowd.  
  
Away from the crowd, and off towards the security officers.  
  
No, he bloody well is _not_ going with a security officer simply because Erik demands it. That man will let him go precisely right now, because this is the kind of thing—mass panic—even if he can’t stop them all at once, it calls for mental intervention. He can just reach out one by one and—  
  
But he can’t. Because Erik clamps down on his mind so firmly that it functions as a mental slap, reverberating up through the front of his forehead and ricocheting somewhere around his temple. Startled, he tumbles over his own feet, only staying upright by virtue of a very solid grip on his arm.  
  
“What—?”  
  
“Get up: you need to get out of here,” Erik snaps, in the motion of turning away and snagging the arm of a passing guard. One gesture and the young man nods, face wide and astonished at being personally redirected by _Magneto_. Stupid wartime nickname, but it stuck, and it’s what is floating in the young man’s mind. What eagerness. All in the line of duty—the fervent desire to serve a murderer.  
  
“Erik—“  
  
“You don’t need to be here,” Erik says again, and once he’s convinced that the solider is off doing as told—coordinating with a few others to press the crowd back—Erik jerks around. “We don’t know whom he or she was aiming for.”  
  
“It’s a him,” he snaps, reflexive, and—keep talking, give her a chance to get away. Her mind has vanished among the crowd, and if she moves fast, she can escape in the midst of the panic. “A middle-aged man.”  
  
It hadn’t felt that way: she’d felt young and sharp, not angry exactly, but focused, with a storm under the calm. All that lightning—she’d been dangerous, powerful.  
  
And a mutant.  
  
“An older man, and a human. I can show you—I can—” He can’t. It’s all lies. And he’s gambling on the fact that Erik won’t decide he needs to look. _Please_ let this work… “Or, I could _try_. I can’t—I don’t know who he is or what he looked like, but his mind—minds _feel_ male or female, feel a certain age.“ Lie, keep on lying: he bites his lip and shakes his head. “I don’t know _how_ to show you that, but it’s _true._ ”  
  
Erik pauses, blinking. “Are you sure it’s a man?”  
  
“Yes! I don’t know how to make that clear.” Let the frustration seep through, and a good dose of temper to go with it. If Erik thinks he’s angry at not being believed, and frustrated at being unable to prove himself, this might just work. Even if it doesn’t, it’s given the woman time to get away. “It’s intuitive, and you’re not a telepath. You won’t recognize the feeling. But—“  
  
Erik nods, drawing back and smearing his hand across his mouth and dropping his head lower, staring off to the side. “I wasn’t doubting you,” he says finally. And he might not have been—his mind is clearly somewhere else, caught up in frenetic movement—in the motion of his legs, as he begins pacing back and forth. “But we don’t know which of us was being shot at—“  
  
Ah, paranoia, then. How wonderful. “He wasn’t shooting at me.”  
  
“You sure?”  
  
“Positive.”  
  
Erik’s mouth twitches. “Good.”  
  
“ _Good?!”_  
  
“Better me than you.”  
  
No, not really. Assassination is _never_ good, even if it’s necessary. But that’s for a later bout of contemplation to deal with. For now, he needs to keep busy, keep on giving that woman time to vanish—  
  
But Erik’s quick nod toward a guard cuts all that short, and before anything else can be done, the man’s hand is tightening, pulling Charles to the side.  
  
“Don’t you dare try to—“  
  
Touch, pull, order—don’t do any of that. But the man is merely doing as he’s told, which means that, as usual, it’s Erik that he really ought to be screaming at.  
  
And because the situation calls for it: “Erik!”  
  
But Erik has already turned away, heading for the crowd and the group of his officers positioned at the front, holding everyone steady. No one gets in or out, leaves, anything—it’s a sound tactical move. What is _not_ a sound tactical move? Sending away the only telepath present, who could identify the assassin.  
  
Not that he will. But Erik doesn’t know that.  
  
“Let me _go_ ,” he growls at the man holding him, thrashing out against his grip and slamming his free arm down on the man’s wrist, trying to break his hold—or his wrist. It works for a fraction of a moment, but he’s quickly caught again, both arms pinned behind his back when the man loops his own arms under Charles’ elbows and begins dragging him backward.  
  
No telepathy, no use of his arms—isn’t this just a right spot of fun?  
  
“Erik!” he bellows again, kicking backward at the man holding him and drawing out a pained grunt when he makes contact.  
  
It’s nice to know that Erik can’t remain entirely unmoved: though he’s already in conversation with his officers, he snaps around at Charles’ second cry, brows scrunching up in what looks like consternation. Possibly worry too.  
  
With a quick word to his men, he spins around in Charles’ direction and marches over to where the man pinning Charles’ arms has stopped moving, waiting on Erik’s approach. His fingers are sweaty and sticky and an acute displeasure to have touching his skin.  
  
Erik needn’t have bothered to come near: Charles can bloody well get his message to Erik from right here: “Tell him to let me go immediately, or—“  
  
“Or nothing,” Erik barks, jerking to a halt in front of him. That really is a spectacular glare Erik is sporting. Enduring too: it doesn’t abate when he turns his attention solely to the guard: “Take him back into the train. Find a room without windows and put him there. Tie him up if you have to, but if I come back and find that he’s managed to make a break for it or has come to some kind of harm, it will be your head.” He leans in. “I mean that literally.”  
  
Against Charles, the guard goes still: it’s all the more obvious when he nods, already beginning to backpedal with Charles locked against him, occasionally flinching when he’s bumped by the man’s knees. “Erik, gods damn you—!”  
  
Bloody hell, this guard holds tight. As large as he is, that’s astoundingly uncomfortable, and it’s even worse considering he’s highly motivated. And, as if the situation couldn’t be any more offensive, Erik has turned his back and marched off, entirely indifferent to the threats being thrown his way.  
  
Hooking a foot into the doorway of the train is a last, desperate attempt, and it does Charles no good, accomplishing nothing besides a very impressive scrape to the woodwork. He thrashes and twists all the way down the hall, throwing his weight side to side and succeeding at least a few times in pitching them both into the wall, but the man is large and determined and no doubt trained: perhaps he’s even smart. That would explain why he’s so familiar with the layout of the train, and how he knows that none of the compartments will be windowless.  
  
But even appreciation for the man’s cleverness is not enough to mitigate the sheer offense of being tossed into a janitor’s closet.  
  
No number of threats to the man’s well-being have any effect, either for good or ill. Knowing that Erik has managed to find some level-headed employees ought to be cause for praise, but current circumstances have turned it into the most exasperating thing imaginable: it would be pure heaven to see even a flicker of frustration on this man’s face as he encloses Charles’ unbandaged wrist in one end of a handcuff, the other end subsequently attached to a heavy metal pipe on the wall.  
  
Even when he walks out, he doesn’t say a word. Just leaves Charles there—with a light on, thankfully—cuffed to the wall, behind a locked door.


	23. Chapter 23

By the time Erik comes to fetch him some three hours later, Charles has bloodied his wrist to the point that he’s made a mess of both his hand and his arm. The blood is sticky, at least until it dries and flakes, and then it’s itchy in the worst way, prompting him to dig his nails against the skin of his arm and add a whole new set of red streaks. There’s a vicious joy in that: let Erik see the results of his actions, if he’s so keen to do things like this.  
  
Of course, it also looks far worse than it is, with blood spread up along his skin in flaking patterns that are strangely reminiscent of irregular tiling. How nice. He’s made art.  
  
Erik misses any such silver lining: or so says the look of muted horror on his face when he dismisses the guard and opens the door, looking down to find Charles curled in the corner with his wrist and arm stained red. It’s probably the connotations that truly terrify him, but, whatever it is, when he tries to speak, nothing comes of the first few tries, and he gapes ineffectually, resembling a startled guppy.  
  
“Three hours, Charles,” he finally croaks, wiping one hand over his mouth and planting the other on his hip. “How did you maim yourself when I only left you alone for _three hours_?”  
  
“Three hours is, believe it or not, actually quite a long time when you’re locked in a janitor’s closet.” That sounded a bit prissy. Perhaps he ought to work on that. Violent has a better chance of effectiveness. Perhaps he should point out that he considered dislocating his thumb in order to get loose, but thought better of it, knowing that there was a solider waiting outside the door.  
  
Erik shakes his head, disbelieving. “Apparently so.”  
  
“Yes. Long enough that, after being handcuffed to a pipe in a janitor’s closest, I found that I was disinclined to simply wait for you to come retrieve me.”  
  
Accusations do so often have the effect of jump-starting Erik, and while that might not have been a direct accusation it does get him moving: he kneels down in front of Charles, one hand darting to his pocket to fish out a tiny silver key. Gingerly, he takes Charles’ hand in his own, not-so-subtly poking at the bones, searching for damage with the careful piano scale motion of his fingers, and, once satisfied that it’s all torn skin and nothing worse, he pops the cuff open and pulls Charles’ arm away from it.  
  
“We didn’t find him.”  
  
“Pardon?” Sharp, efficient politeness. His mother was so very good at that—at cutting to the core with cultured works coated in sharpened ice. But, regardless, he allows Erik to lift him to his feet.  
  
“The man. Whoever he was, he was clever. We found the gun—he couldn’t have reasonably hidden himself if he took it, knowing that I can sense metal—but we didn’t find _him._ ”  
  
He snorts. “You realize he tried to kill you, yes? There’s no reason to sound as though you admire him for having the ability to nearly pull it off.”  
  
Though his hands are occupied with holding the door open for Charles, Erik nods. “I do. Admire him, that is.”  
  
“Remind you of yourself?” He precedes Erik out of the room, nose turned up. His wrist is stinging, which is to be expected when he’s chafed it open, but his pride is no doubt stinging more. Locked in a janitor’s closest for three hours. Ridiculous.  
  
If only that’s all it was: but it’s the anger that’s eating at his insides that is so much worse. Erik had him dragged away, kicking and screaming, like a child incapable of being any use in a volatile situation—like a bearer, meant to be pretty and cosseted, well away from any action.  
  
Because he is useless for anything but sex and babies.  
  
The muscles in his legs quiver, and his stomach rolls, locked in line with the direction of the future that’s stretching out before him in a nightmarish dreamscape.  
  
That will not be his life. It will _not_.  
  
Right up until he does it, there’s no actual intention to turn and slug Erik in the face. Frankly, that’s probably why he gets away with it.  
  
Reeling back, he wrenches around and slams his hand into Erik’s jaw. Gods damn it, that _hurt_ —a crunching, reverberating pain that ricochets up into the bones of his arm—but it’s worth everything to watch Erik’s head snap back, his hand fly to his mouth, blotting at blood.  
  
Yes. And now the consequences. Not so wise, to hit someone whom he can’t outrun. For the moment, there’s not much he can do beyond watching Erik raise his head, incredulous, to fix him with the most disbelieving of open expressions.  
  
Could be worse. If he were anyone else, and he’d hit Erik, it _would_ be worse.  
  
“You will not treat me like I’m fragile.” That… came out remarkably calm and even. Score one for the disadvantaged: there has to be some sort of victory, small or not. Small, though, being the operative word: he breathes in through his mouth, swallowing down the extra saliva that’s pooled in the corners between his gums and teeth. Damn his nerves. Erik isn’t going to _really_ hurt him. There’s no cause to be quite so anticipatory.  
  
Erik blinks, blotting at his lip again. There’s a nice split there, and it’s already swelling. Good. “What?”  
  
“Once, you would have let me track that man down _with_ you.”  
  
Once, it wouldn’t have been necessary to help her escape.  
  
“And… you want an apology because I care for you?”  
  
Yes. Because it’s making Erik crazy. “I am as competent now as I ever was!” Shouting is really overkill when he’s this close to Erik, but there’s too much pressure in his chest to ease it away. And—even closer now, as he grabs the lapels of Erik’s jacket and yanks, shaking Erik as roughly as he can. “Just because I’m a bearer—“  
  
Erik’s hands dart to cover his where he’s gripping Erik’s jacket. “And you don’t think it has anything to do with me watching you almost bleed out once before?”  
  
That’s what _happens_ in war. If Erik hadn’t discovered what he is, that wouldn’t have stopped either of them from going to war again. “It doesn’t work like that. That—people _die_ in war, Erik, and it’s messy and it’s bloody, and if you hadn’t discovered what I am, I would have gone back to that, and you wouldn’t have tried to stop me.”  
  
“Yes.” Bizarrely, his eyes are steady, face completely serious. “I would have. Stopped you, that is. When you were lying in that tent, I was already making plans to keep you from going near anything like that ever again. Even before I found out you were a bearer—“  
  
“You want me to believe you’re coddling me not because I’m a bearer but because, I’m, what, _me_?”  
  
How can a person keep so still? Erik is stonier than most statues when he’s like this, immovable and implacable. “Yes,” he answers simply. “Because you are _you_ , and I love you, regardless of whether or not you can have children. The fact that you’re a bearer only made it easier for me to gain the ability to keep you safe.”  
  
“You wouldn’t have kept after me if I hadn’t turned out to be—“  
  
“Yes. I would have.”  
  
That’s a nice thought, but an entirely impractical one. Erik is coming at this from the perspective of a man whose decisions are heavily influenced by a biological need to attend to his bearer. Whether or not he _knew_ Charles was a bearer doesn’t matter: even before they mated, Erik was affected by the pull of a potential bond. What’s natural and what’s biological is inextricably tangled and, by now, fully indiscernible. Telling Erik so is nowhere near easy, though, but Charles moves forward anyway, canting his head to the side and peering up at Erik, looking for—what _is_ he looking for?  
  
“It’s irrelevant now,” Erik pushes on, shrugging. One more dab of his lip reassures him that it’s not a pressing injury, and he drops his arm, matching Charles’ stare with his own. “The way things worked out, I now have a legal right to do as I see fit to keep you safe. That’s simplified things.”  
  
“Excuse me?”  
  
Erik shrugs. “As King of Westchester, I couldn’t _order_ you to do anything. This is simpler.”  
  
 _This_ doesn’t pass for a _life_. How nice it must be for Erik to have things simplified, all at the expense of allowing Charles to actually live. _Fuck_ him: this is not a way to live, and only an arrogant ass could think he has the right to dictate this way.  
  
But Erik isn’t willing to hear any of that—and about all Charles can do is toss Erik aside with a shove, try to stalk past him. It doesn’t work: his arm is caught before he’s gone a few paces, and he’s drawn back to Erik’s side with firmness so reasonable that it’s maddening.  
  
“You don’t have to risk your life in order to live, Charles. You can do many fulfilling things that don’t require you to put yourself physically in the line of fire—“  
  
Easy for him to say. He has _choices._ Erik can do whatever he wants, hasn’t had his whole world snatched away. He can be _reasonable_. He can be _calm_. That’s a luxury for those on the outside looking in.  
  
But it’s not something that’s tolerable for those on the inside.  
  
Leaning into Erik’s space, Charles angles his face to meet Erik’s eyes, doing his best to shred through Erik’s stare with his own gaze. Erik may have stared down some of the most dangerous men alive, but he’s _nothing_ when it comes to this. Does he think he’s intimidating? Disconcerting? No. Those pale eyes are beautiful, but they are _Erik’s_ , and Charles knows precisely where to hit Erik so that it hurts.  
  
“You of all people ought to know what it’s like to have your choice taken away.”  
  
And: bullseye. Cruel, in the context of this morning’s shared memory, but effective, and, currently, about the only thing he has in his arsenal that he can use to hit back at Erik.  
  
The color leaks out of Erik’s face with alarming swiftness, draining everything but his lips and his eyes, leaving them as the only two points of color in a pasty expanse of skin. It makes it harder to look away from him, not that there’s any reason to do so.  
  
“Don’t you dare,” Erik whispers. It comes out as a rasp, barely making it past the agonizing bob of his throat.  
  
But why should Erik be the one who decides where they draw the line? He hasn’t been respectful of anyone else’s boundaries, be they on a map or in the mind. “How did you feel when you were shut away because of what you were?” One step forward, followed by another: the motion brings him into contact with Erik’s chest, though no more than through a whisper of cloth and no real solidity. “Shaw shot your mother because he was trying to force you into manifesting quicker. And maybe because he hated that she was human. But he did it because of what you both were, and you hated him for it. Is that what you want, Erik? For me to hate you like you hated Shaw?”  
  
The danger of saying any of this never really registered—it sits there in the back of his mind, niggling, but suppressed—and it’s oddly self-perpetuating: pushing Erik just that little bit further is a high derived from a lack of control in all other areas. Erik is vulnerable like this. Erik will break like this. If Erik hits and hurts, he deserves to be hated.  
  
Maybe.  
  
Perhaps.  
  
But it never happens that way.  
  
Rather than lashing out, Erik turns away. The motions are mechanical, his muscles so tense that they ought to snap, but he’s a well-controlled compaction of tension, and it’s going to take more than words to break through something that deliberate.  
  
What a mess this is. Behavior like this isn’t going to gain any favors, isn’t going to cull a false sense of security. It won’t _accomplish_ anything. He’s only spiting himself.  
  
But it’s so hard to stay quiet….  
  
Erik’s hand darts out and seizes his wrist, right above the bandage over the mark.  
  
What?  
  
One tug does nothing, so he gives another, scowling up at Erik when there’s no budge. A step back is equally as ineffective, with Erik pulling him up short and refusing to allow him the room to put some space between them.  
  
With the air of someone on the edge of a fight, Erik drags his other hand up and settles his fingers on the edge of the bandage. It’s intolerable enough like that, but it’s worse when he begins to peel it back, tightening his other hand at the first sign of struggle and cutting off any motion. And the bandage keeps unwinding, one pass after another, around and around, tickling skin….  
  
When it comes loose, Erik drops it heedlessly to the side where it flutters, curling to the ground far more innocuously than it ought.  
  
“I think it’s time we took this off, don’t you?” Erik comments evenly—but his eyes are steel, absolutely cool, and immovable in the worst way. No physical slap could ever compare.  
  
Far better that he felt the sting of Erik’s hand. This will be worse. _Far_ worse.  
  
“For gods’ sake, _think_ about what you’re doing.” It’s the best protest he can manage—and it isn’t nearly enough.  
  
Erik hums, tugging Charles’ arm out in front of him. His movement is frighteningly choreographed: he reaches out with one fingertip, resting it on the unblemished skin an inch or so to the side of the mark.  
  
Not that it bears looking at. He _won’t_ look. This is the same as he’s done in the mirror for the last few days with the fading bruises at his neck: he’ll glance, and look away. Look back up at Erik—look anywhere but at that horrible scrawled signature on the underside of his wrist, translated in neat scrip directly above it. Erik Lehnsherr, and then, below it, Erik’s signature.  
  
“Skin’s a bit red,” Erik murmurs, tracing the letters with his finger.  
  
Charles flinches.  
  
“It suits you well. The ink looks very nice on the color of your skin.”  
  
Stark black against pale. Don’t look. Doesn’t matter to his stomach: he may as well have swallowed rocks.  
  
If it’s a lesson in cruelty that Erik wants to impart, he’s doing very well indeed.  
  
With painfully deliberate care, Erik raises the mark—and the wrist attached, though it’s clear which matters more at the moment—to his mouth, dropping a light kiss over the top. Just a teasing brush of his lips, but his eyes find Charles’ over the curve of the skin.  
  
“Are you ready to go now?” he asks, pulling back after a few too many seconds to be able to claim it’s casual.  
  
Does that require an answer? His mouth is too dry, though a moment ago he’d been swallowing back extra saliva. Yes, though: that needs an answer. Erik’s raised, expectant eyebrows say so, and past experience indicates that he’s not backing off until he gets what he wants.  
  
An answer. Right. An answer for the question that wasn’t really asked at all. Shadows and smoke, mirrors, and the kind of indirectness that comes with a heaping side of cruelty.  
  
“I—“ Cannot give an answer, obviously. Not over the chest-wide ache, and not over the coldness that’s dribbling down the bond. It’s coated in a sticky, cloying determination that clogs up the bond and turns it unbearable.  
  
 _Learn this lesson now_ it says, though the message is hardly necessary: Erik’s eyes say it well enough all on their own.  
  
“Do you really need to ask?” How very pathetic he sounds.  
  
Erik’s brows smooth back to more acceptable levels, and he relaxes, drawing away a few inches. “No. But I’m doing you the courtesy of asking anyway.”  
  
That’s _sickening_.  
  
Also? Lesson learned: maybe not taken to heart the way Erik would like, but learned nevertheless.  
  
He looks away. Erik does not, thankfully, try to make him do otherwise. He couldn’t: there’s simply no way that it would be possible to meet that stare head-on, to encounter _courtesy_ , as Erik deems it, wrapped in a polite veneer, when it’s something far worse.  
  
All of this is _courtesy_.  
  
What he thinks doesn’t matter. It’s only polite to ask. Not necessary. Polite.  
  
This time, he barely catches the heave of his stomach in time to force it back down. A very near thing, though: the acid licks at his throat, setting the flesh on fire.  
  
“Do you understand, Charles?”  
  
Again, his arm is raised by Erik—though, this time, rather than his wrist, it’s his hand that Erik presses his lips to, laying a kiss on the bare skin and skimming over the grooves there. A little affection trickles down through the bond—followed by a hint of sympathy—but it means less than nothing.  
  
“Yes.” Because he _does_ understand. And it’s awful.  
  
Another kiss. “Then I think we’re done here.” Maybe so, but whatever sickness is in this room, it’s going with them, clinging to Erik’s fingers as he twines them around Charles’ own, knitting their hands together and infecting them both. They will never be a sweet couple, walking hand in hand simply for the pleasure of touch. Always, there will be something behind it.  
  
A light tug: Erik leading him by his hand toward the door, tutting disapprovingly when he catches sight of Charles’ other wrist, as bloodied as it still is. “What a mess you’ve made of yourself,” he say, tugging Charles down the train corridor.  
  
Yes, what a mess.  
  
“I’ve brought Dr. McCoy,” he continues. Gods only know how they’re managing to make their way down the corridor, when walking feels like a chore made for greater men. “I thought the people of Westchester might need medical attention.”  
  
Is he expecting praise for that? Apparently so: he glances up, sighing almost imperceptibly when he receives no response. Unfortunate for him: he’ll be waiting a good long time for positive affirmation—not after what he’s just done, what he’s just made clear.  
  
“I’ve been told you and Hank get on well. I’m not surprised. You’re both the kind of intelligent that most of the rest of the world can only dream of being. I hired him after we killed Shaw, you know.”  
  
No need to ask what for. Even early on, Erik was planning for a pregnant mate. How considerate of him, building a beautiful, gilded cage for his prey, right from the start. Retaining a competent doctor and possible friend all in one go—Erik’s been sorting him out for play dates and prenatals all in one go.  
  
“You’ll feel better once you’ve been patched up.”  
  
As if his moods too are now subject to Erik’s whims.  
  
But everything is, isn’t it? That’s the crux of it. Be what Erik wants, or lose everything.  
  
\-------------------------  
  
Hank, as it turns out, looks a great deal more exhausted than the last time Charles saw him. He’s lost weight too, which is probably to be expected, given the kind of stress he must be under. The constant state of warfare is notable for its casualties, but the injured nearly leak over the borders, so great do their numbers seem at times—and, according to the rumors, Erik has been providing any injured prisoners with medical care. _Good_ medical care—the kind organized by his personal physician.  
  
That’s a large number of people. _So many_ prisoners, and it’s a boon, this matter of Erik offering them care, but—it’s an overwhelming number for a staff only meant to care for nobility. Has Erik hired extra doctors? Probably not. It’s nothing short of a miracle that he’s allowing prisoners care in the first place: he’d hardly hire more hands for a purpose that he’d most likely rather do without.  
  
 _Why_ Erik has ordered it remains to be seen, but, for the time being, medical care in Genosha must currently be nothing short of insanity.  
  
 It’s little wonder that Hank is tired, in light of those duties.  
  
Were Erik not hovering so close that he can’t be ignored, there might have been the chance to ask after Hank, inquire of his duties, if he’s had any opportunity for further research. But it’s clear what this appointment is about—and it isn’t _that_. And Hank, while he shoots Charles an apologetic wince, can’t do much more than dutifully answer Erik’s questions about Charles’ health. In all fairness, if this day hadn’t wrung out Charles’ capacity to care about the answers, Erik’s questions might have possibly been relevant and worth knowing.  
  
Should Charles be taking prenatal vitamins? Yes.  
  
Will there be any scarring from the wounds left by the handcuff? No, not if the wound is treated properly.  
  
Is the mark healing correctly? Perfectly.  
  
Is it normal that Charles’ appetite hasn’t been what it should be? Yes, normal for a forced bondin—for a—for—  
  
Funny, how Erik doesn’t like to call it what it is. Poor Hank, though, tripping over himself and fighting down the flush of red engulfing his face, all because Erik can’t handle hearing things labeled accurately.  
  
“It’s all right, Hank,” Charles assures him quietly, mostly because someone needs to, and it won’t be Erik.  
  
Hank goes still, blinking, then pushing his glasses back up the bridge of his nose as he gulps nervously. “Yes, Ch—ah, _Sir_.”  
  
Sir? Is that what they’re calling him these days? Certainly a downgrade from “Your Majesty.” And really bloody stupid, when he and Hank are well acquainted to the point of being far beyond formality.  
  
“Charles—“  
  
Good gods, is Erik never silent? Always pushing, always prodding. Always, smothering with his heavy hand on the back of Charles’ neck, not meant to be unkind, surely—probably intended for reassurance—but it’s sweaty and heated, and it makes the skin itch.  
  
But it contents _Erik_.  
  
Even in the past few hours, the bond has stabilized, but it’s still active enough to feel a trickle of Erik’s feelings without trying. That will always be the case now, apparently: life is this itch on his skin and in his brain. Though, the itch on his skin is most probably due to having both his wrists re-bandaged—he can’t say the same for his brain.  
  
“I was under the impression that I had a speech to make.”  
  
Hank freezes, though his back is turned and he’s hunched over his file. But he’s listening—and Erik knows it. Luckily, he only spares a quick glance at Hank before dismissing him, focusing in on Charles. “If you aren’t feeling up to it—“  
  
How quaint. _Now_ he’s worried over that? At no point has any of this felt possible, but that isn’t what matters—not when Erik _doesn’t listen_. The level of dread is the same as it was before the assassination attempt—but an assassination attempt makes it acceptable for him to back out.  
  
“I want this over and done with.”  
  
Erik’s hand slides a few inches lower to his upper back. “If that’s what you want—“  
  
Oh? It didn’t matter a half hour ago what he wanted. Now that he’s doing as Erik says, Erik has slid back into his well-entrenched habits of coddling and approaching with softness and care. Now that true disagreement isn’t possible, he’s suddenly willing to accept input.  
  
To hell with _that_.  
  
“And then I want to go to bed.”  
  
Erik’s fingers twitch, directly below the collar of Charles’ shirt. “It’s only noon—“  
  
“I don’t care.”  
  
“Charles—“  
  
The sound of Hank clearing his throat from across the room startles the both of them—not because it’s particularly loud, but mostly because it sounds a bit like a dying wheeze. Anticipation, perhaps: Erik is unnervingly famous for bloodshed.  
  
With any luck, Erik will allow him some time later to converse with Hank. And Hank _will_ inevitably be owed an apology. They can discuss it over lab reports and the near-perpetual game of skirting direct references to genocide and coercion.  
  
“Yes?” Erik asks tersely, hand still resting on Charles’ bare skin.  
  
Hank’s gaze flits up from the floor, but it’s a short lived endeavor, and he drops his eyes again, strangling himself on his own words before he finally succeeds in pushing out something intelligible. “My Lord, it might be better if I spoke to your husband alone. Patient confidentiality….”  
  
Erik gaze turns thunderous. Not so difficult to guess what his answer will be.  
  
Charles snorts in disgust, turning his face away from both Erik and Hank. There’s an itching in his hand that would very much like to culminate in a grab for the scalpel that’s packaged on the side-table, but what good would it do? Is he really that eager to spend more time tied up?  
  
No. The answer is no.  
  
Always no, it would appear: Erik’s hand pushes him back down when he tries to rise. “Whatever it is, it can be said with all present, Dr. McCoy.”  
  
Hank fidgets, nervously shifting from one foot to the other and looking anywhere but at Erik. “I—it’s only that—just—My Lord, he ought to be seeing someone to—well—to—it’s very common for bearers in his… situation to become—to become… a little unsettled… mentally.”  
  
Being called mentally unstable is not particularly _pleasant_ , but Hank is undeniably correct. That isn’t like Hank, though, pointing something like that out to Erik, and—oh, Hank, he must be—if he thinks—does Hank mean to suggest _himself_? Yes: the earnest hope that’s brewing there in his demeanor would indicate that he does.  
  
Erik will never allow it. For all that he selected Hank as a physician, as someone he knew Charles would find agreeable, he is, for exactly that same reason, unsuitable as a confident—or he would be in Erik’s mind. Hank was meant to be a friend, and anyone allowed access to—well, it’s simple, really: anyone who knows the depth of detail that would make psychiatric help effective—Erik would need to be able to dispose of them at a moment’s notice.  
  
Presumably, he’s aware that doing that to a _friend_ would not be met with the most positive of reactions.  
  
Regardless, though, Hank may still pay a price for being the one to point out the obvious—and it’s a pathetic state of affairs, when Erik needs a doctor to inform him that his actions have twisted his husband to the point of needing psychiatric help. Disgusting. That Erik has survived with such a dearth of rudimentary observational skills—downright amazing, that. Anyone ought to know something so obvious.  
  
Though, _that_ is not quite fair either.  
  
Because, really, Erik _does_ know—it’s there in the pinch of his face, the disdain threaded with guilt—but like any good, blind husband, he’s seeing only what he wants to see. Charming, that he bristles at the suggestion of his mate being anything less than sane—oh, bless, is that anger? It’s flavored like it, vibrating down the bond.  
  
Erik eyes Hank with undisguised irritation, though nothing metal turns up sharpened, which probably ought to be counted as a victory. The height of his reaction is a tightening in the muscles of his mouth, followed by a need for affirmation: at this point, his patterns are easy to see. Uncertain? Then touch is a must, and from there it’s no surprise that his hand skates up over any skin it can reach, ending up tangled in Charles’ hair, likely before Erik has consciously considered what he’s doing.  
  
Best to think that way: or else Erik has reached the point where he doesn’t mind grabbing a good hold of Charles’ hair in public, and if Erik has knowingly begun to believe such liberties are his to take, it doesn’t bear thinking about. There’s some small comfort to be had in the fact that Erik draws back when he realizes what he’s doing, smoothing out the hair that he’s mussed.  
  
“Would you like to talk to someone, Charles?” he asks eventually—and, by some miracle, there’s genuine consideration in his words.  
  
“No.” Perching his hands on his thighs, he very deliberately doesn’t shudder. It’s a near thing. Hank, yes, he’d talk to Hank—but Hank doesn’t know what he’d been on the brink of offering. And endangering Hank isn’t worth it. Beyond that: talk to someone, talk to a _stranger_? No. It’s an appalling idea. Anything he says will be related directly back to Erik, surely.  
  
Hank pushes his glasses back up his nose again. “It’s not healthy to—“  
  
“You said yourself, Dr. McCoy: he’s perfectly healthy. Or were you mistaken?” The ice in Erik’s voice could halt an army. It can certainly halt Hank.  
  
“Yes, My Lord.” The poor man has flushed a deep shade of red. “I mean, no, My Lord, not mistaken. Physically, he’s in good health.”  
  
“Then we’re done here.”  
  
Holy miracles themselves can’t have been met with any greater relief: Hank beats his retreat with an enthusiasm only shown by the addicted, the terrified, and the extremely socially inept. Whether or not, in Hank’s case, it’s the last or the penultimate is anyone’s guess.  
  
Pity Erik’s words only seem to apply to the doctor.  
  
“If you wanted to talk to someone—“  
  
“I don’t.”  
  
“Maybe about David?” Careful, cajoling—like the hand on his face, tracing a thumb along the cleft of his chin.  
  
“No.”  
  
But Erik doesn’t look pacified. For all he decried McCoy’s suggestion, it’s taken root. He’s _considering_ it. “But you’re obviously struggling—“  
  
“I said I didn’t want to talk to anyone: not that nothing is wrong.”  
  
“Then talk to _me_.”  
  
“I _have_.”  
  
Over and over until he’s blue in the face. And Erik is exactly as immovable as ever, perched in front of him, between his legs and nearly against the exam table where Charles had been seated when he’d been ushered into the room. Erik is always the taller of the two of them, but, when sitting, it requires tilting back almost painfully to meet Erik’s eyes, and the motion proves as irritating as always, cramping the muscles painfully. What a waste of effort: the resulting view is not exactly a sight he’s craving, when it would have been relatively easy to predict what he’ll see.  
  
And, yes, there it is: Erik’s eyes are tight with tension, but there’s honest affection and worry in the lines, and his thumb is tender, stroking the beginnings of stubble with an odd reverence that doesn’t entirely compute to his words.  
  
“Once we’re done here and we go back to Genosha,” Erik begins slowly, moistening his lips. Gods that’s—it’s more attractive than it should be. The way that tongue had felt earlier today, on him…. “you and I are going to do the things we enjoy. We’ll play chess, spar, I’ll show you what I can make out of metal; you’ll read my mind.”  
  
Erik really believes that, doesn’t he? If it were up to him, he’d ply his recalcitrant spouse with well-loved memory associations, and, in Erik’s perfect world, Charles would fall straight into his arms and back to a time when those memories were made.  
  
Disgusted, he turns away, snorting under his breath: Erik makes it so very easy to harbor disdain.  
  
As particularly unsubtle as his distaste is, it’s no wonder that Erik notices it. “I’m sorry, I didn’t catch that.” Clearly, he did, though, or he wouldn’t sound so irritated.  
  
Engaging that irritation could potentially pass as the highlight of his day—but the consequences may not be worth it: he looks away, settling for crossing his arms and tossing his shoulders up and back down in an approximation of a shrug. “Do as you like, Erik. Gods know you don’t seem to feel the need to consult me about any of it.”  
  
“I’ve consulted you.” As calm as he’s forcing his face to be, his voice is edged with irritation. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but I was under the impression that’s why you have a speech to make once we’re done patching you up.”  
  
“You don’t actually want me to.”  
  
“What?”  
  
“Correct you.”  
  
“For godsake, Charles, stop it. You’re being petty.”  
  
“And where would I have learned _that_?”  
  
Erik’s leg twitches forward, but he doesn’t follow through with the motion. Instead, he draws back, shifting most of his weight to one leg and dropping his hands to his hips. It leaves his stance lopsided, which is just about in line with his thinking—he apparently has no better plan than to watch Charles snarl out his grievances.  
  
“You look like you’re praying I’ll get struck by lightening,” Erik admits eventually, tone worn thin and… hurt? He has no right to be hurt. Thinking he’s doing the right thing—damn it, it doesn’t mean he _is_ , and it’s too bloody unfair that Erik can consider himself the wronged party.  
  
“You know I’m not religious.”  
  
This time, Erik takes that step forward and moves in close to the table. “I’m well aware of your religious views.”  
  
“For someone put in a camp on the basis of his religion, I would have thought you’d have less sympathy for the mess Shaw cobbled together.” As fast as the conversation is shifting, mental whiplash isn’t out of the question. It’s all a matter of taking shots where they’re possible, and picking at anything Erik says.  
  
As Erik claims: petty. Yes, but effective.  
  
“Shaw warped things, yes, but he didn’t create religion. There’s… I won’t say the gods that are worshipped in the temples are the real thing, but the idea of it—we’re praying to something, and does it really matter which something that is? Surely a true god would hear us regardless and understand that our prayers were meant for him.”  
  
Charles looks away, biting down on his tongue to keep from grimacing. “I never took you for a theologian.”  
  
“I’m not. But, as you say, I had my childhood stolen on account of religion. A wrong like that makes a man think.”  
  
“We’ll have to attend services, you know,” he points out glumly, staring down at his hands. There’s a hang-nail on his right thumb, and, despite not noticing it earlier, it’s begun to bleed sluggishly. “You’d be a scandal if you didn’t bother.”  
  
And what a delightful little slice of Hell attendance will be. Bearers are required to be blindfolded upon entering the Temple, because once wasn’t enough, evidently. The general idea is to create a reminder of their dependence on their guardians—and what a bloody effective reminder it is. Can’t do much for independence when you’re clinging to your husband’s arm, lest you walk off into a wall.  
  
Erik sighs. “We won’t have to attend often.”  
  
“On holidays.”  
  
“Unfortunately.”  
  
“I’m not sure why _you_ are objecting.”  
  
“Because I don’t relish the prospect of dragging you through that kind of misery on a regular basis.”  
  
That’s too much: Charles looks away, digging his teeth into the flesh of his lips, bunching the skin and grinding down until it hurts. That—the real, clear pain of it drills through enough of the fog—and it’s that easy, that small of a thing to push a spike of rage up through his chest and set him to snapping viciously, vision red with fury: “But you _do_. You’ve fucking done it already. You— _fuck_ you, pretending that it hurts you. If it hurts you so bloody much, don’t _do_ it.”  
  
And—where the hell did that come from? Where—how—nothing moves his fist or gets him swinging, but he’s up off the table, hurling himself at Erik and crashing into him, worse than on the train: two solid objects, colliding, and Erik has _heft_. It hurts, smashing into him, propelling them both backward into the wall—  
  
Fist blocked, but—crashing metal, medical supplies spraying everywhere in a violent array of plastic and metal clattering over the linoleum floor. Erik slams back-first into the wall, cushioning Charles body lest he hit too. That’s out of line. It’s _supposed_ to hurt. It would be the best thing, if it hurt.  
  
It doesn’t.  
  
Erik won’t let it.  
  
No bruises for pretty, perfect Charles. No hitting back, no more sparring, nothing physical like the gods-damned-solider that he’s trained to _be_.  
  
“Hit me back!” he snarls up into Erik’s face. Hands tangled in Erik’s jacket, shaking him. Erik’s eyes are snapping-mad, but he lets it happen and only absorbs the blows, turning them aside. “I’m a trained _soldier_ , you ass. Stop trying to make me a—I’m not—I’m not your fucking _doll_.”  
  
Oh. _Oh._  
  
What would infuriate Erik more than anything? Engaging with him is clearly not the answer, when all that means is serving up his attention to Erik on a silver platter. But to _not_ engage. Yes _, well_ : one _sure_ way to force Erik to hit back at him and put physicality to the pain he’s already causing—it’s been lurking all along.  
  
“Or maybe you’d like that,” he finishes, softer this time, and he can feel a smile licking up the corners of his lips. It’s bitter and mocking, and he appropriates a few moments to savor the flash of worry that flares up over Erik’s face.  
  
And then he lets go, throwing himself back into his own mind.  
  
Or… not _back_ , per se, but more in the spirit of a bow and arrow: the arrow must be pulled back before it can launch forward.  
  
But launch forward he does.  
  
Unhooking himself from the present, he hurls his mind out beyond the confines of the room. A secretary first, a soldier beyond that, a woman on the street: he hops from mind to mind, abandoning his body back in the exam room. Erik wanted a mindless doll? Then he’ll get one.  
  
And when he realizes precisely how disagreeable that is, he will have to cause pain to reset the matter.  
  
A minute, possibly two, in which the world flies by in front of his mind: streets, trees, other faces, blurs of colors, and sights and scents and sounds—before there’s a sharp sear of agony across the front of his mind.  
  
When he drops back into his body, the agony turns physical, slicing across the front of his skull for a snatch of seconds before dissipating completely.  
  
He’s left breathing heavily and staring unabashedly at Erik.  
  
Erik, who has pushed through his shields and forcibly shut his telepathy down for the length of time that it took to ground him back in his own mind.  
  
“Don’t ever do that again.”  
  
And what have we learned, children? Less than nothing. In fact, Erik may have discovered a trick for learning in the negative: picking up the exact opposite of what he should have.  
  
“I think I might start doing it any time you try to order me, actually,” he counters. “I’ll check out, and you can order me about as you like. Wouldn’t that please you? I won’t argue with you. You can even fuck me, if you like, free of protest. I won’t say a word—“  
  
If riling Erik was the goal, it’s been well accomplished: or so says the way Erik latches onto his shoulders, whipping him around and forcing him back-to the wall. One good shake sets his teeth to rattling, but—how demented is he, smiling through this? _Grinning_ , right out. Hank is right. Hank is _beyond_ right. He needs psychiatric help. He’s broken. This is a kind of a demented that can never be truly washed away, isn’t it?  
  
But, as quickly as he flared up with anger, Erik burns himself out and sets up a fortification in the ashes. No one could ever claim that Erik is a _stupid_ man, as much as he may be foolish: he adapts far too well to be stupid. Worse, Erik knows _him_ : knows how to counter Charles better than perhaps any other person alive.  
  
“You haven’t thought this through,” he begins quietly, his touch having softened. Just for good measure, he’s begun running his thumbs over the swell of shoulder under his grip, tracing the curve of muscle. “You think I’ll either have to pull you back each time, or I’ll have to threaten you with something awful. More executions, perhaps? No.” He lowers his chin, leaning in closer. “I’ll let you do it. I’ll let you drift next time. But… you do that in public, and you’ll look mad. You’ll lose your credibility. Do it in private, and I’ll _let_ people see. I’ll make the private into the public. Enough servants see you staring catatonically into space, rumors will start. Think of trying to lead a council meeting—and, despite what you so flatteringly seem to think of me, the plan was always to allow you to control those areas relevant to your duties. Justice. Food distribution. But if everyone thinks you’re _mad_ …” He trails off, cocking his head. “I won’t correct them, and if you don’t have _my_ backing, the council will shunt you aside, and you’ll have less influence than ever. And _think_ : is this something you believe you can maintain with the children present? David, any—“ He drops his hand, patting Charles’ stomach, “ _future_ children—will you keep this up at their expense?”  
  
No. No, that isn’t fair. That isn’t how this is supposed to go.  
  
Furious, he rips away from Erik, twisting his face up into a glower of utterly impotent rage—and Erik reflects it blankly, almost patiently, letting him go and stagger backwards, finally tipping to the side and catching himself on the exam table.  
  
“Your telepathy is a beautiful gift, Charles.” His eyes track Charles across the room, though he remains standing against the wall, propped there with his arms folded. “Don’t use it like _this_.”  
  
“Don’t use _me_ like this, then,” he snarls in return. It doesn’t matter. He’s already losing steam, crumpling back down. Blocked again. Erik is meeting him at every turn, and just when a new door appears to be opening, Erik slams it closed. This cage is growing more secure with every new, failed attempt at breaking free of it.  
  
“Use you? An interesting choice of words. And, in that vein, perhaps we ought to talk about why you seem to be doing your best to goad me into hurting you.”  
  
“The inside should match the outside, yes?” he spits. And then, turning his face away, he adds, “I’d rather you have to stare the physical results of your actions in the face.”  
  
“Let me see your wrist, Charles.”  
  
That hits like a punch to the gut. Sliding to the side and clutching the exam table for support, he blocks out the feeling of medical supplies crunching under his feet, choosing instead to stagger around behind the table, putting it between himself and Erik. The table is metal: nothing about it is truly safe, but it’s the best that can be done given the circumstances.  
  
“If you want me to look at the physical results of my actions, then hand me your wrist.” Both Erik’s eyebrows rise, one disappearing under his half-loose fringe: it covers half his forehead, arching downward in a messy bend.  
  
When Erik begins again, his voice has dropped an octave, and it’s gained in intensity. “I _see_ the results of my actions. I’ve done what I had to do in order to ensure that the one thing I can’t live without—I’ve done what I needed to do to stop the one person I love from leaving me.” He takes a step forward, frowning in consternation at the table, as though it’s personally offended him simply by existing. “I’ve never expected anything out of this world, Charles. After my mother died, I only wanted to live long enough to kill Shaw. If it hadn’t been for you…” Laughing, he finishes up the space between himself and the table, and, once close enough, splays his hand down over the surface. “Think about what you’re saying: this world has never handed me anything, and, when it finally does, telling me that, by virtue of biology, I’m allowed to have what I want most, you want me to look it in the face and reject it. You want me to turn down what I want more than anything, when, before now, my life has centered on loss.” Pressing down onto the table, he tips forward, hair tumbling even further down into his eyes. “I won’t do it. For the first time in my life, life’s rules have worked in my favor. Don’t expect me to throw that away.”  
  
It’s a challenge, not to lean back and away, but giving that to Erik would be akin to dumping blood into the water and hoping it doesn’t attract sharks. “But I _do_ expect it. We were equals, you and I. We fought together. I don’t question that you love me, but I _do_ question whether you understand _how_ to put that in to practice. This isn’t how you treat someone you love, Erik. You don’t take away his options and make his life miserable.” Don’t react to Erik’s stare, don’t flinch back, and, better yet, lean forward, challenging Erik on equal ground. “I’m sorry that Shaw killed your mother. I’m sorry for what he did to you. This world _does_ owe you a payment for that. But if you think _I_ am that payment—then you’ve overlooked the fact that what Shaw did to you, _you_ are doing to _me.”_  
  
The foundations of the table begin to groan, and Erik’s fingers drive down into the top of it, precisely as the metal screams in earnest, twisting away and crumpling: the top of the table folds in on itself, but, before Charles can run, it clunks down to the floor on his right, trapping him there, the wall on his left and to his back. Straight toward Erik is the only way out. “Explain to me, then, why nature built you this way. You had to smother your memories of our bond, lest instinct get the better of you. And, even now, you want my touch. You’re built to have children. What _is_ all of that, Charles, if not an answer?” Any other time, Erik would almost certainly move forward, forcing Charles’ hand. But, for now, he stays where he is, apparently content to merely block any escape route.  
  
“I still have a _choice_.”  
  
“Yes. You do. You can choose whether or not to keep this up, fighting me at every turn and making yourself miserable, or you can take a place at my side, and we can rule together and make this world a better place.”  
  
“That is not a choice. And _I_ am not the one making me miserable!”  
  
“Then tell me what to do to help you.” The anger—it doesn’t melt, exactly, but it fuses with earnestness, and Erik reaches out, palms raised upward. _Unarmed_ it says, but that’s never exactly true. “So far, your only request is for me to let you go. Or for me to hit you. I won’t do either of those things: the first is unnatural, considering we’re bonded, and the second is only an indulgence of your desire for me to make it easier for you to cast me as a villain. No, on both counts.”  
  
As bizarre as it seems, this is he most traction Erik has given to his ideas in… so long, really. Longer than deserves a number. At least this is a conversation: better than being shut out. Whatever it was about the last few minutes that rattled Erik, it’s a blessing.  
  
Not that any of that means Erik will give in and recognize the need for choice.  
  
Why, then, is it worth wasting breath?  
  
“I can’t—“ Don’t crumple, don’t turn away, but— “You can help me by treating me like you used to. Like I’m your equal. Like—”  
  
He trails off, chest tightening and squeezing the air out of his lungs. It’s like arguing with a wall. Erik doesn’t listen, and it’s become a matter of repeating over and over and never being heard at all.  
  
There’s no point in talking.  
  
So, conversation over. Nothing was being accomplished, and—why _is_ he talking? Hitting out at Erik physically worked better, but he’s too tired for that, and Erik’s attention to—  
  
Attention. Yes, actually, _attention_. Because he’s taken this as he cue to dart forward, and slide a hand around any bit of waist he can reach, using a handful of hip like a handle, and guiding Charles away from the broken table and toward the door. “I do understand your argument, you know,” he admits. “But you’re wrong. You say you’re a soldier, but you have a far higher calling than serving on the battlefield. We’ll show the world exactly how competent bearers can be: you’ll shape the next generation, Charles. Think of it: raising the next king of the known world. Isn’t _that_ better than Westchester alone? And, in the meantime, you’ll show them all how a bearer can excel at statecraft. You don’t see it now, but I swear to you, play by my rules, and I’ll serve the world up for you, let you do right by people like you always wanted. Stop them from starving. Help make their lives better.”  
  
How is that possible when he can’t even make his _own_ life better?  
  
The thing is, though, letting Erik push these conversations to this point isn’t doing anyone any favors. All it does is allow Erik to repeat his ideas and give himself a self-righteous boost. Does it feel nice, thinking so much of one’s self?  
  
But… self-righteousness is a weakness, and if Erik is so fond of grandstanding, there must be a way to use that. At the very least, there has to be a way to cut Erik off at the knees with his own tendencies.  
  
That way doesn’t come from engaging in a debate. That much is becoming sickeningly obvious. For that to be any use at all, Erik would have to be _listening._  
  
Not being heard is the very definition of infuriating. It is—  
  
It’s an insult that would likely sting Erik just as easily. Faking the appearance of disinterest—there’s no way to make it authentic, when it’s impossible not to hang on Erik’s every word, lest he make a comment relevant to the state of things, but Erik doesn’t actually need to believe it’s authentic: he just needs to fail to gain a reaction.  
  
Drawing his shoulders back and up, he leans backward, flopping his entire weight against the wall and out of Erik’s hold. Only the element of surprise makes it possible, but Erik isn’t expecting it, and he doesn’t tighten up his grip quickly enough to stop it.  
  
“Don’t I have a speech to make?” he asks dully.  
  
Erik’s eyes him warily, chaffing his hands up and down and rubbing Charles’ arms, as he might do to stave off the cold.  
  
No reaction.  
  
“Charles… are you all right?”  
  
Certainly not. If Erik hasn’t figured that out yet then he really hasn’t been paying attention _at all_.  
  
“Charles?”  
  
The hands on his arms drift up to frame his face, tilting his head first one way and then the other, and peering at him expectantly.  
  
“I’m fine, Erik. Stop coddling.” Still toneless, utterly without inflection. “I would like to get this over with.”  
  
Erik’s thumb sneaks higher, rubbing over a cheekbone. “Are you sure you’re ready?”  
  
No. Not at all. Any alternative would be welcome, but the fact of the matter is: there isn’t an alternative that won’t see Westchester starved out. Bodies would pile up, and innocent people would die. This isn’t the way to fight a rebellion. That will have to wait. Now that they’re back in Westchester, surely he can make connections, pass messages—find some way to lay a network.  
  
But the first part of that is making sure people remain alive long enough to join him.  
  
Which makes this speech necessary.  
  
A lot of things are necessary. Necessary is disengaging from a fight he’d rather have, when Erik runs on about things that are insane, but—Erik is watching him with worried eyes, and his hands are reassuring, searching out the little hurts and trying to soothe them away.  
  
There’s no chance that he’ll be able to resist Erik’s attempts for long. It’s too difficult to remain impassive, given the circumstances. For now, though, it’s working. Erik can’t counter him if there’s nothing for him to counter.  
  
“I want to get it over with.”  
  
“That isn’t what I asked.”  
  
“Why wouldn’t I be ready?” Nothing could ever ready a person for this: a recognition of that is as ready as its possible to be. “I’m only doing as you’ve asked. Playing by _your_ rules. Aren’t I allowed to save the world now?” A tiny hint of bitterness sneaks in at the end, but the sentence overall flops lifelessly between them.  
  
“You’re turning my words around on me.”  
  
The temptation to snap back is almost overwhelming, but he thins his lips and smothers the irritation. “I’m ready.” Refusing to reply to Erik’s accusations is the only means available for blocking him. Debate, and the words erupt into a fight.  
  
But it’s so difficult to simply ignore the injustice. Caged in with everything else, and now with words too—his own personal cage, of his own making, in this case.  
  
This can’t last long.  
  
Erik sighs. “I’m not sure you _are_.”  
  
“Would you like me to wait?”  
  
“Is that what you want?”  
  
He shakes his head, running his tongue along the slickness of his inner teeth. There’s a bitter taste there: it’s possibly the poison of the words themselves. “I want to show the world that a bearer can excel at statecraft.”  
  
“ _Charles.”_  
  
No response.  
  
“I want to do right by my people.”  
  
Watching Erik grit his teeth is, in some sense, satisfying. In another, it’s infuriating: it should be _more_ than only a frustrated motion. To realize that _this_ is all he can push Erik into now—it’s a very bitter notion.  
  
“Fine. If you won’t tell me what’s wrong…”  
  
How laughable. Erik knows what’s wrong: he’s been told over and over and over, and he refuses to accept it. That doesn’t mean he doesn’t _know._  
  
“I would like to give my speech now.”  
  
I would like. What a novel concept.  
  
With one more quick stroke of his thumb, Erik finally drops his hand and pulls back, hands cupping Charles’ shoulders and drawing him out away from the wall. Erik keeps on watching him, waiting for any sign of faltering, but when his tugs are followed with no resistance, he’s left with a choice: protest further, or allow this.  
  
But hasn’t he gotten what he wants? Poor Erik, being obeyed and not liking how it feels when that comes in the form of dead-eyed listlessness.  
  
“All right,” he says after a few more heartbeats. “I’ll have the people called into the courtyard.”  
  
All right. Meaning, Erik has no concept of how to dig this in further and mine for thoughts and feeling. If he did, he’d chase after it, but in the face of a lack of emotion he’s instead let it go. He’s been wrong footed. Good. Count that a victory, then.  
  
Funny how winning like this doesn’t feel very much like winning at all.  
  
Really, it only feels like both of them have lost. But… that’s better than letting Erik win.  
  
Isn’t it?


	24. Chapter 24

Despite the fact that scarcely hours earlier a woman with a gun had scattered bullets over the heads of those Westchesterian citizens who had turned out to see their former and current leader disembark from the train, the courtyard of Westchester’s palace is filled to capacity when Charles takes to the balcony nearly halfway through the afternoon. That’s bit surprising, given that the palace is situated outside the city walls: if it weren’t, it would have been in the control of the rebels, like the rest of the actual city of Westchester.  
  
In keeping with the hour, the shadows are long, and his silhouette stretches off the balcony and over onto the heads of those clustered below. No one seems to notice or care: every eye in the place is glued to his face, everyone hanging on whatever he has to say. Worse still, a few cameras are angled in his direction, ready to broadcast this to the central squares of the other regions. This speech will, more than likely, play a few hours later in various city centers. No televisions for private households, but gods forbid the government would cede the power to broadcast to everyone all at once—to give them _answers._ Tell the people what to think, and perhaps they’ll learn to think it.  
  
The people aren’t wrong to want an explanation. Their world has been upturned thoroughly, and, at this point, they can’t say why, beyond some vague attribution to Westchester’s former leader and Erik Lehnsherr’s bizarre fascination with him.  
  
They deserve more than speculation and supposition. If their lives are to be so uprooted, they deserve to know _why_.  
  
More importantly even than that: this will save them. If they rebel against Erik now, they’ll be crushed. As hard as this is, it will save lives and make possible a later attempt at overthrowing Erik. They’ll be alive to try again.  
  
As their king, he swore to protect his people, and his pride is not a sufficient reason to renege on that promise.  
  
This has to happen. The stage is set. Now, it’s up to him.  
  
Clipped to his shirt is a tiny amplifier, rigged to the rather substandard sound system located at various locations throughout the courtyard. It’s hardly as splendid as Genosha’s get-up, or those of many southern regions: just another reason to think of the North as outdated, lagging behind its Southern counterparts. But a sound system—why spend money on that, when other parts of Westchester needed the money so much more?  
  
Placing his hands down on the stone balcony railing, palms flat and grinding down against the graininess of the stone—granite—he gazes down at the crowd: the conviction in him deflates, leaving behind the press of necessity, and, worse, the inevitability of guilt.  
  
This is his fault. They _deserve_ an explanation.  
  
But—opening his mouth to give one, pushing himself into admitting that Erik has conquered him as effectively as he conquered the regions—  
  
It’s _difficult_.  
  
Erik. Small mercy that he agreed to stay behind in the palace, barely out of sight behind the curtain on the balcony’s arched entrance. He can track all potential threats just as easily from there—and possibly more so, if the attacker doesn’t plan for his presence, out of sight as he is.  
  
But he’s _there_. As always, his presence lingers.  
  
Biting down on the inside of his cheek, Charles levels himself back, bouncing his weight to the soles of his feet. A useless move, of course—there’s nowhere to run, and priming himself to flee is stupid. Also: cowardly. If he can’t address his people, he never deserved to rule them at all. Any monarch who, when times become difficult, can’t take responsibility for his failures the same as he once took credit for his victories, isn’t fit to rule.  
  
So: speak. He opens his mouth, looks down—it’s a mass of people, faceless, but individual—a mind-numbing crowd thinking as one with individual thoughts—and—  
  
“I’m _sorry_.”  
  
In some sense, victory might find a bit of a home in his tone: the words come out measured, if a little strained and filled with aching. But… he _does_ ache. An apology might not have been what had been primed to come out, but that doesn’t make it any less true, and it’s not as though it’s nudging anything else out of the way.  
  
This was never a planned speech. As it stands, whatever he has to say is straight from the guilt in his chest and the anxiety that’s stiffened his legs and clenched his fingers down against the granite. It’s organic in the truest sense.  
  
 _If you do anything to incite them against me, Charles,_ Erik had said _, you’ll be very sorry indeed._  
  
Erik should have known better to threaten someone who is _already_ sorry.  
  
“I’ve failed you. As your king, I was meant to protect you. And, if it had been possible, I would have given my life in exchange for your safety.”  
  
One quick look would tell him everything he needs to know about what the crowd is thinking. Looking, though—it’s out of his reach. Not physically, but doing it—it’s an agonizing prospect.  
  
But their faces—they don’t tell him _anything_. So many of them are blank, tired, staring up at their king with a dearth of emotion that’s too deep to only be superficial. They counted on him, and he’s failed them.  
  
“I _tried_ —“ How pathetic. He can’t manage to make it past two words without cracking on the second one. He pauses, grinding his teeth down harder on his cheek, and starting again: “I am _always_ part of Westchester. And, right now, I am as overrun as the region itself.”  
  
A startled ripple weaves through the audience: mostly people shifting, lolling from foot to foot, though a few murmurs make their way into the air above the crowd.  
  
“And, perhaps, that’s what I should have been all along.”  
  
Oh, gods, gods, he can’t—this can’t be happening—to say this aloud, when it’s always been so tightly locked down—  
  
He squeezes his eyes shut and breathes against the tears that prick the insides of his eyelids, hot and grainy.  
  
He owes them this.  
  
“As a bearer—“ Please, no— “—I have legally never been fit to hold the throne.”  
  
At first, there’s nothing. Silence. Absolute silence. And then the whispers: they rise swiftly, rolling like a wave over the audience, cresting somewhere around the middle and then crashing down, shattering the air with their force.  
  
“I don’t believe I was personally unfit, but the law disagrees. If you want to hold my actions against me, I wouldn’t blame you for doing so.” A great deal of the audience may not have heard him: the noise only dies down on the tail end of the sentence, but by then he’s rolling on. To stop now would be to never finish: this has to be done _now_. “Erik Lehnsherr may have always intended to see the regions collected under a central government, but his concentration on Westchester in particular is _my_ fault. In an unguarded moment, my actions allowed a bond to spark between us, and when he found out what I was, I ran. I hid at Westchester. To give myself up would have meant allowing him the use of my telepathy, and, ultimately, it would have changed very little: his campaign to unite the regions was already in motion, and my surrender would only have secured his victory. But it was still I who offered him aid to begin with, who allowed him within Westchester’s borders as we worked together to fight Shaw. _I_ could have ended things before they ever started, before he became aware of what I was.”  
  
He could have killed Erik.  
  
And he didn’t.  
  
And now—he drops his head, baring his neck to his people, and—deep breath, deep breath, this _has_ to be said _—_ they’re all paying for his decisions.   
  
“But I didn’t end this. And things are as they stand: the battle is lost, and, at this juncture, failure to recognize that is only going to lose you your lives.” Who knew the truth would cut so _much_? “The capital is not equipped to withstand a siege in winter and with little preparation, and by the time spring comes, Genosha’s army will be too well entrenched. The war is _lost_. I take the blame for that… which is why it is my duty to tell you: nothing can be gained from continuing to the point of siege. We will lose, and badly. Please, as your king—though I no longer have that right—I ask you, surrender… and live.” Surrender and wait. Other opportunities will come. They must, though that cannot be spoken aloud in the here and now.  
  
Their emotions lick at him, creeping up all around and battering for entrance. Betrayal, anger, pity, fear, horror, hopelessness—there’s nothing good, and nothing simple.  
  
Curling his fingers into the stone, he locks his knees, stands up as straight as he can, and pushes on: “Erik—“ Is it proper to call him Erik in a situation like this? What else should it be? Something ridiculous, like His Royal Majesty? Surely not. “Erik has ordered that my sister, Raven, hold Westchester until my son, David, comes of age.” Raven, who had killed the queen. It’s bolstering to feel the tide of anger that rises up at the prospect. The people had liked Moira—the human population had loved her, and even some of the mutants. “I had no say in that decision.” A bit of a risky addendum, but—doesn’t he deserve _something_ of himself in this speech? “I—“  
  
All those eyes, staring back at him. He should never have looked up. This is _his_ fault, his doing, and all these mistakes—how can his people do anything but hate him? Any right he once had to stand here, before them, like a monarch, has faded with everything else that once felt so solid.  
  
There is… nothing left to say.  
  
One step back, then another, his hands sliding off the railing with a creeping finality. He’s shaking. Badly. That’s no way to end an address—but this _is_ the end.  
  
His mother would be appalled. Leaving like this, as though he’s a chastened child. A king is always dignified, she would have told him, and that might not be quite true, but a king _should_ always have honor. This is the last of it—the last of his rule, and he can’t end it by turning tail and running.  
  
Forcing his legs to lock once again, he straightens up. Take a deep breath—it’ll be fine, ten minutes from now when he can duck away and stop thinking.  
  
For now, it’s down to what _should_ be done.  
  
With as much poise as he can muster when shaking this badly, he straightens his back—ram-rod straight, same as he was taught, very formal—and bows to the crowd. The move is lacking in flourish and levity—not his usual style at all—but it’s a clear acknowledgement, and a conveyance of regard.  
  
If there is one thing in the world that he _does_ regard, it is the people of Westchester.  
  
As hard as he tried, that should have been enough. It _would_ have been, if he’d been physically different.  
  
Gods, it isn’t fair. It isn’t—  
  
He takes a deep breath. _Life_ isn’t fair. That’s trite, but it’s true, and no one promised otherwise: no one promised that he wouldn’t, one day, have to straighten up from his last king’s bow, and present his back to his people. No one promised that he wouldn’t have to one day walk back through a curtain, away from his kingdom and his people, and into something unfamiliar, unwanted, and untried.  
  
As it turns out, life doesn’t make promises.  
  
A child’s wishes aren’t rules; dreams don’t always become reality; and reality, when it comes, is inescapable in a way that has burrowed down under his ribs and cleaved to him, fused into his very makeup itself.  
  
 _A bearer_ , his mother had said. _Always hide what you are_.  
  
Unfortunately, she never explained what to do when hiding became impossible.  
  
\------------------------  
  
Midnight.  
  
Charles wouldn’t know it if not for the chime of the clock out in the square. In years past, he’d set his life to those chimes, structuring his day around them, and by this point his body is attuned to them: his senses latch on to the clearness of the sound, counting along with each strike.  
  
“It’s late,” Erik murmurs from under him, his hand working through Charles’ hair, slow and methodical—soothing—exactly as it’s been doing for hours now.  
  
It _must_ have been hours. All this time he’s whittled away, lying sprawled over Erik’s chest, face on his shoulder while Erik eases him with light caresses and a patience that he’s not always known for—nothing short of years could possibly encompass what any of this means.  
  
What has he done? How could—but, _necessary_. It’s better to regroup and go at this when they’re prepared, rather than losing all resources on an attempt that never had a chance at success.  
  
It makes sense, but his mind echoes: _what have you done?_  
  
Those who think Erik so impatient would be startled to see him now: having spent hours in bed, demanding nothing by way of sex, seemingly content to comfort instead, to pet and soothe through the worst of his husband’s heartache.  
  
Who would have thought? Charles shivers—thinking hurts—and continues to stare sightlessly toward the opposite wall.  
  
“Are you cold?” Erik asks, concerned. His free hand immediately gropes for the blanket that’s slipped down off Charles’ shirtless back—small miracle that he’s still wearing a pair of sleeping pants—and tucks it up over his shoulders. Once he’s apparently satisfied that it will stay put, he slides his hand to the middle of Charles’ back, rubbing with an extra amount of vigor: one would think Charles simply has been outside in the cold and needs the feeling worked back into his limbs.  
  
When that doesn’t earn him a reaction, he sighs—the motion lifts Charles’ head along with Erik’s chest—and goes back to stroking through Charles’ hair. “You should try to sleep.”  
  
Sleep? Would that such a thing were possible. Dreamlessness would be sheer luxury at the moment, but his head is far too filled for that to be possible. All he’d receive would be a complicated mess of disturbing dreams.  
  
“Do you want to talk about today?”  
  
Frowning, he pushes his face more forcefully into Erik’s shoulder. Since when is Erik given to verbally hammering on like this? Usually, of the two of them, Erik is the one who would rather stew in his silence.  
  
But, then, gods forbid Erik would ever be predictable.  
  
Strange, but the sum of Erik’s actions speaks more toward a desire to smooth things over—whatever that might mean now. At the moment, it’s another attempt at comfort: moving his face to the side and tucking his chin over the top of Charles’ head, rolling his neck enough to press his cheek to Charles’ hair. “We’ll need to go out to the front tomorrow: with any luck, you’ll have convinced most people to disband, but we’ll go in the morning with a battalion and try to set things back to order. We shouldn’t see any real action, but you know as well as I do that’s never guaranteed.”  
  
Quite true. Anyone with military experience knows that. That’s hardly the most surprising part of that statement: that honor belongs solely to the proposition that Charles will accompany him. The way Erik has acted so far, there’s never been any indication that he’d want Charles to see action ever again.  
  
“I’m surprised you’d let me,” he mutters dully into the skin of Erik’s neck. The patch next to his mouth grows damp from the moistness of his breath, and he scoots his cheek a little way forward, wiping away the condensation.  
  
Though it’s undeniable that Erik’s quite pleased to hear some sort of speech—he stiffens, breath catching, pronounced enough for Charles to notice the hitch—he doesn’t comment on it. “I said that I’d rather you never actively go to war again. This is nowhere near as dire: little more than a patrol, albeit with a higher chance than usual to encounter some slight resistance.”  
  
“And what you really mean is that it would be beneficial for my people to see me acting in conjunction with you, serving your purpose.” The bitterness of his tone is nearly overwhelming, to the point where the words taste terrible in his own mouth.  
  
“Well, yes, but there’s also the matter of your pleasant company—“  
  
“Surely even _you_ can’t find me pleasant at the moment.”  
  
Erik chuckles. “When you’re trying so hard to be disagreeable? I’d hate to ruin your efforts by finding you tolerable.” Sobering, he drops a kiss to Charles’ hair. “But if you do suddenly find that you’re inclined to revive a little of your usual good nature, I certainly wouldn’t say no.”  
  
“Should I give you directions about where exactly you can shove that idea, or can you figure it out for yourself?” Absurd, this notion of ease that Erik has, of workability, of—he breathes in a lungful of air, holding it until it burns, and turning his head to grind it against Erik’s shoulder. It’s all so stagnant: his face is heated from lying too long on one side, and the nervous energy of doing nothing, of lying still for hours on end, has welled up in his limbs.  
  
It’s that horrible feeling that comes from hours of lying awake: frustration, chased by tossing and turning, but worse in that he’s hardly moved at all, when the effort that would have to be expended simply falls flat.  
  
“You’ll never sleep if you keep feeling all of that.”  
  
“You don’t know any of what I’m feeling,” he mumbles bitterly in reply. The effort of fully opening his mouth is simply too much.  
  
“I do, actually: all that restless frustration is building up right at the base of the bond.”  
  
Ah, yes, the bond: for the increased confusion of the already perpetually emotionally muddled—because how could he possibly _not_ twist himself into knots over the idea of Erik listening in on his emotions?  
  
“Then stop _listening._ ”  
  
Which Erik presumably interprets to mean he should stop speaking. Wrong end of the spectrum, but, fine, it will do.  
  
At least, it works until Erik tips underneath him, sliding to the side, and lowering Charles’ body down to the bed as Erik slips away and sits up. The motion isn’t particularly smooth, and, displaced from Erik’s chest, he thumps a little heavily down to the mattress.  
  
Erik’s off on some mad new crusade, then, bright and brilliant and in the middle of the damn night. Turning to look would be… advisable, but Erik doesn’t need the satisfaction of the attention, and turning away, offering his back to Erik, is deliciously soothing on his frayed nerves—and, more importantly, on his pride.  
  
“Come on. Up.”  
  
Which is all the warning he gets before Erik’s hand materializes around his arm, tugging none-too-gently, and flying in the face of the whispered snips of soothing words that Erik has been showering him with for the last several hours in hopes of easing him into sleep.  
  
“Thought you wanted me to sleep,” he protests, though the words fall to the side, vague and lifeless.  
  
“That would be my first choice, but I of all people understand what it’s like to be wound too tightly to have any hope of it. So: get up.”  
  
Now his sleeping patterns are fair game for manipulation? How wonderful. Should he brace himself for when Erik starts following him to the bathroom too?  
  
Shaking off Erik’s touch with a rolling jerk of his shoulder, he attempts to slide a little further away—and is hauled straight back to the side.  
  
“Damn you—“ he curses before he thinks better of it, lashing out to stop the drag of his body over the sheets—and getting nowhere. Erik pulls him to the edge of the bed with appalling ease, tipping him over and essentially pouring him onto his feet, mostly with the option to end up in a heap on the floor, or to let his legs catch him, decide to function, and preserve what little dignity he has left.  
  
It’s mostly shock and instinct that makes the later a reality.  
  
“Have you become completely unhinged?” But he can’t do much more than shove Erik’s hands away and resign himself to the fact that, in reality, that doesn’t do very much to stop Erik at all. Once “no” ceases to have a meaning, his own physicality never stood much of a chance as a barrier. “You’re _insane_.”  
  
Unhinged Erik might be, but he’s pleased about it: there’s no mistaking that thinned smile that may as well declare itself to be a stifled grin. Oddly, though, his eyes aren’t so amused, shifting to a shade darker than normal, and clouded by… the bond feels like frustration. Amusement, yes, but frustration, and—so much determination.  
  
Hands may not have an expression, but the manner of their movement is far closer to the emotion of Erik’s eyes, tending toward the brisk and forceful that occurs when Erik is chasing after a point to be made, or a goal to be attained. Those hands chase, pestering, tugging until Charles budges forward, giving up locking his knees: being dragged is terribly undignified, and that’s what they’re headed toward, if one of them doesn’t give.  
  
“No more unhinged than normal,” Erik answers. “You’re not sleeping; you can’t stop thinking. Physical exertion will help with both, and, at the moment, I suspect you would dearly love to take a few swings at me.”  
  
Not wrong, no, but completely confusing: is that permission to—what, let loose and attack Erik right here, right now, in the confines of a guest room in Westchester?  
  
That alone would be reason to take those shots: it’s Erik’s worry that barred them from Charles’ room—the fear that there might have been something dangerous stashed there. The thing is, he’s absolutely right: there are a number of convenient weapons hidden throughout the master suite—and not just the kind that would be useful in harming Erik. For the most part, Erik has grown unconcerned about assassination attempts from Charles: more so, his focus has landed on anything that might help Charles to escape—and there’s more than a few things in his quarters that would be useful in such an endeavor.  
  
So: the guestroom. A perfectly adequate place that isn’t home and that isn’t equipped to help him.  
  
“Come on, we’re going outside.”  
  
Outside. In the Autumn. In Westchester.  
  
Madness. That’s the proof of it, then.  
  
“Erik, we aren’t dressed for—“  
  
“Downstairs, then. The Danger Room.”  
  
And why does that convey the feeling that Erik has played him? A room for training the younger mutants whose powers are unstable—the place is a relic of what he stood for as a king, and the hint of dread forming in his gut suggests that it might be prudent to avoid it at all costs. If Erik had suggested it first, it would have been dismissed immediately. But, when compared to outdoors, it’s almost reasonable.  
  
Which is how, ten minutes later, Charles finds himself downstairs behind the locked doors of the room, holding his sword slightly to his right side, both hands wrapped around the hilt, and ready to do his best to land some sort of injurious blow. Something that draws blood would be ideal, though with a blunted sword that isn’t likely to happen easily.  
  
No need for it to be easy: he’s _creative_.  
  
“Your move,” Erik tells him, sword also at the ready, equally as dulled. He’d grabbed one off the racks at the side of the room, rather than taking his own. That’s understandable—dulling the blade of an actual battle sword would sit badly with most warriors—but it’s still unforgivable how easily he adjusts to an unfamiliar weapon. The metal sings to him, he’d once explained, and just because he hasn’t met the weapon before doesn’t mean he can’t know it within seconds. For any man that would be an advantage; for someone as innately gifted in combat as Erik is—even apart from his gift with metal—it’s a positively _lethal_ advantage.  
  
Not that, in this case, Erik is looking to do much killing. Pity, that. It might be kinder.  
  
Hissing out a breath of air between his teeth, Charles lunges forward.  
  
Oh. Yes… _this_. He’d… forgotten what this feels like, what it means to feel the burn of his own muscles. The clang of sword on sword, the vibrations up his arms and down into his fingers—that will ache with repetition, and worse when this is over and the lingering soreness settles in his muscles—and even the twisting psychological weight of knowing that he’s attempting harm: all of these things, and he falls back into it, rising to put himself behind his weapon and strike out, again and again and again, parried each time by Erik.  
  
Yes: Erik. Erik, who is grace personified with a sword, and terrifyingly effortless, pivoting back and blocking, slipping to the side, drawing Charles into following him. No matter what movement he makes, his footwork is perfect: that’s worthy of note, considering Erik has accused him more than once of approaching fights with the eye of a teacher, not a student.  
  
Foolish of Erik: anyone with any sense understands that you need to be _both_.  
  
“Faster,” Erik barks at him, still absorbing the blows, parrying with sharpness and speed—always, same as he had when they’ve sparred, though never before has he refrained entirely from striking back. The metal may as well be a part of him, and he works as though it is, dancing Charles around the room, carried by that immaculate footwork.  
  
It’s a far better dance than the monstrosity they’d had at their wedding reception.  
  
As natural as Erik is, he has the luxury of not needing to look away: his gaze stays fixed, seeking every line of Charles’ body as—oh, how plainly embarrassing. Sedentary life is crippling: attempts to repel Erik from Westchester necessitated that his physical training be pushed aside, and it’s no wonder that he’s out of shape to the point that his breath ratchets up to sharper pants—when he has to work for them—punctuated with tiny cries of frustration when he _cannot break Erik’s defense_.  
  
Damn it all to hell, he has the chance to hit Erik, and he can’t manage it—that’s pathetic. Gods, what a waste of space he is, useless at this, useless at defending his kingdom. What kind of king can’t fight? And to have to concede to _Erik_ —this man—this horrible, forceful man—and—after all Erik has done, to not manage to land even _one_ blow—  
  
It can’t be like this. It can’t. It can’t, it can’tcan’t _can’tplease_ —  
  
He strikes high and to the right, swinging for Erik’s shoulder—blocked—and then scrambling to strike again low, where he overcompensates just a touch, and Erik’s arms twitch with the suppressed desire to counterattack— _insulting_ , that he’s holding back—but that can’t be the end of it—necessity means brushing the notion off and lunging again. He’s getting sloppy. No good fights were ever won like that, and he’s not a child—a baby unable to control his emotions—that was something drilled into him—and here he is—  
  
“Damn you—I hate you, you’re cruel, you’re a _murderer_ —“  
  
That—the last one was a shout, still half caught in between his teeth—believably so, with how hard his jaw is clenched. Unwavering, smug, talented Erik, who wins and wins and wins—  
  
“I hate you, gods, I hate you, hate you—“  
  
Swing, swing—but it’s all uncoordinated hacks, over and under, again and again—gods, please, please—with the noises hidden over his own pained cries—the vibrations up his wrists, gods those are agony, and the _thoughts_ — “Do you _know_ what you’ve done to me?!”  
  
More burn of muscle. It’s not enough, and it won’t be, but energy like this—it won’t self-contain, and it burns bright in his chest, surging: those must be his limbs, but they’re not his own, because this isn’t fair, isn’t fair—  
  
“Why, _why_ —“ And then a wordless scream, but—that wordless hacking, with his sword, with his voice. He’ll land a hit, surely, sometime—no, but swing, again, gods, why won’t it break through— _why won’t it break through?!_  
  
And then he just screams.  
  
The sword is gone, hurled somewhere at the opposite wall. And it doesn’t matter.  
  
If he only stands—oh, he’s only standing, shaking, crying— “I’m not _finished_!” he rages, and why the hell did Erik think he could come close anyway? Entitled, like always, but a fist will do just as well as a sword.  
  
Or Erik will stop it just as well.  
  
Again—hit again—with Erik blocking him, taking his blows, catching them on his palms— _why can’t he be hurt?!_ —blocking and never hitting back, but—oh, there’s a landed one, right to his jaw—perfect pattern of blood spatter—  
  
This is going to rip his throat raw, screaming like this.  
  
Good.  
  
Oh, gods, it hurts. Everything hurts. None of it’s fair.  
  
“I hate you, I hate you—if you think you can do this to me— _why_ are you doing this to me?!”  
  
There’s an ache in his muscles, a delicious burn, where energy taps out and he’s spent. The way it feels, it could eat through his muscles, leave them gnawed and severed, cut like a puppet’s strings, to discard him slumped on the floor.  
  
Which he is. Slumped on the floor. On his knees, palms flat on the stone, chest heaving too quickly—far too shallowly—to take in any air. Hello, hyperventilation, old friend: it’s not something he’s properly experienced since he was a child, and it’s a special brand of cruelty for it to creep back up now.  
  
The shape of Erik’s face swims into his blurry vision, and he lashes out without thinking, hanging him out as easy prey for Erik’s efforts: he’s dodged and caught, wrapped up in Erik’s arms and tugged forward while he kicks and struggles, thrashing against Erik’s chest.  
  
Not surprisingly, Erik is clearly willing to wait him out. Cradled like this in Erik’s lap, bellowing out curses and pitching against Erik’s hold: he must look a sight, especially with Erik holding him so securely, waiting for him to burn his energy out.  
  
There was never any question that he would eventually, but the onset of sheer exhaustion is still terrifying when it seeps up into his limbs, sapping his life to the point where his muscles simply give out, surrendering to inevitability and, perhaps a little less imminently, to Erik’s will.  
  
“It’s all right,” Erik soothes, half-praying the words into his ear. That is—Erik is—what a _strange_ notion, to think that Erik may be hoping just as desperately as he is, albeit for other things. Like two little boys, aren’t they? Sitting together, one murmuring his hopes in a desperate attempt to make them true, and the other screaming his hurt in some futile effort to make the world listen. “You’re all right.”  
  
Opening his mouth—he intends to spew another line of curses, but—why bother? As quickly as it came, the boundless rage flickers, reality dousing the hope so vital to the rage’s continuance, and he slumps, wheezing, choking back a lungful of congestion and the bone-deep weariness that shudders through all of him, setting his hands to shaking.  
  
When Erik leans in and kisses the side of his head, mostly on his temple, he doesn’t fight, but flops along with it, head pushed a few degrees to the side by the motion of the kiss.  
  
There’s a beat, and the space of their breathing, and then: “Do you think you can sleep now?” Erik asks, very quietly, nearly losing the words in the space of the room.  
  
“I—“ That’s his voice, and it sounds horrid. Hoarse and broken. “Maybe.”  
  
Erik doesn’t ask if he wants to talk about things. But: he _wouldn’t_. There would be no point, not when this—whatever this was—was meant to take the place of talking, yes? Or did it have another purpose altogether? Weapons have, for Erik, always been a turn-on, and who’s to say this wasn’t simply his idea of pornography? Give his furious husband a sword and watch the images flow.  
  
If it were that simple… would it be easier?  
  
“What you’re feeling, Charles—“ Erik exhales heartily, loosening his hold the slightest amount. “You’re a mess. Your emotions—I’m not sure _you_ know what you’re feeling.”  
  
“I know I’m feeling like I _hate_ you.”  
  
“Really? I’m not sensing hate. I’m sensing _grief._ ”  
  
“Maybe that’s what _you_ want.”  
  
“For you to hurt this much? Never.”  
  
Strong hands settle under his elbows, raising him up with an insistent series of tugs that are easier to accede to than to fight, and he complies easily enough when Erik nudges him forward, directing his wobbling steps toward the door. Thick, metal doors, built to withstand some sort of disaster, back from the days when that was still a possibility.  
  
Before the storms.  
  
“Did you ever find the woman who held back the storms?”  
  
As far as questions go, it’s an odd one, couched in an odd circumstance. Why now? There’s no good answer, beyond the weariness in his limbs, and, possibly, maybe, that little pool of hope: she could have felt something similar, once upon a time—worse, actually, because her jailer was _Shaw._  
  
Erik isn’t sadistic. He isn’t—Erik isn’t _Shaw._  
  
But, some days, the kindness makes it worse. So easy to get confused, to get lost in it, to forget that he and Erik, they don’t want the same things….  
  
Erik glances sideways at him, brow scrunched. “I’m afraid not. Can’t say that I blame her: knowing Shaw was dead, she could have done as she liked for the first time in nearly three hundred years.”  
  
“I wouldn’t have thought you’d be much of an advocate for that sort of thing.”  
  
Once they’re both safely out in the hallway, Erik waves a hand, casual, as though closing such heavy doors with a flick of his wrist is nothing at all. “Your situation isn’t the same as what she experienced. You know that.”  
  
Does he? Because from this vantage point, it’s looking terrifyingly similar. “I suppose I won’t last two hundred years.”  
  
Another sideways glance, this time heavier with disapproval. “Shaw was hardly prepared to allow her to assist in the matters of the kingdom.”  
  
“Implying that you’ll let me do exactly that?” He scoffs. Ridiculous. “We’ve been over this.”  
  
“I’m not implying anything: I’m telling you flat-out, I want to rule _with_ you. I’ve already told you that.”  
  
“And what a wonderful job you’ve done so far of taking my views into account.”  
  
Something as simple as Erik’s hand at the small of his back, guiding him up the stairs—it’s proprietary, utterly without permission, and taken completely for granted. If there were any thought for a dissenting opinion, it wouldn’t be found here.  
  
“Offer me something practical, and I’ll be happy to listen.”  
  
Practical being, of course, woefully subjective. But… all right. If that’s the way Erik would like to play. “You’ve not harmed my soldiers, but, as of yet, you haven’t let them leave the capital. What do you think that says to Westchester?”  
  
“I would hope it says that I wish to ensure their men can’t join the current uprising of their home region.”  
  
“Consider instead that you’re indicating to Westchester that you’re holding their soldiers in reserve, ready to execute them at any point.”  
  
How curious: Erik actually appears to be considering, slowing his steps and turning to fully look at Charles, even and measured, and as firm as the hand that remains on Charles’ back. “And if I let them go home? They’ll join in Westchester’s rebellion, and consolidating rule over this region will be twice as difficult as before.”  
  
“No one believes that you won’t eventually slaughter them.”  
  
“I take it you have a suggestion.”  
  
He shrugs. “ _I_ don’t believe your assurances—why would _they_? Despite having spared my soldiers from execution or any actual permanent legal consequences, you continue to routinely threaten to have one of them brought up and shot in front of me if I don’t do as you say.”  
  
That was clearly not what Erik wanted to hear—but it’s pure luxury to notice his sharp intake of breath. Can a breath sound guilty? This one did. “I only ever promised you I’d pardon your people. Your military was another matter entirely. That I’ve kept them alive, given them medical treatment, good accommodations—I didn’t _have_ to do any of that. Threatening them was my last resort. I was out of options—“  
  
“And why would your reaction be any different when you find you’re out of options in terms of Westchester also? If threatening mass executions of the soldiers is the only way to gain Westchester’s cooperation, are you going to do that too?”  
  
“No. I give _you_ my word that I won’t do that.”  
  
“So, your word is only good when pledged to _me_?”  
  
“That isn’t what I said.”  
  
“That’s what it sounded like.”  
  
Erik’s chin dips as he half-tilts his head, giving the impression of an irritated fidget. “And if I send them home and they rebel? Then what?”  
  
What, indeed. And that— _that_ is the tricky part… and the part that any military commander of any standing would know. Erik really need not ask, considering he must inevitably know the answer.  
  
“Go on.” He nods in Charles direction. “I want to hear you say it.”  
  
Well, yes: a victory earned is always pleasant to see, and Erik must have the sense that he’s gained something here. That doesn’t make it easier to stare into the face of that. “Then you would have to kill them.”  
  
“Exactly. You think I haven’t thought through that? If you have a suggestion that keeps them away from a rebellion while also letting them go free, I’d be delighted to hear it: I’m not exactly thrilled to be expending large sums of money to see to their upkeep in Genosha, after all.”  
  
Suggestions are all well and good, but it’s difficult to think with Erik’s fingers branding heat into his back, where he’ll possibly feel it for hours to come, each time he thinks on it. Tactics aren’t well practiced under such circumstances.  
  
Probably why the downfall of so many military leaders has been derived from sex.  
  
“Let them go, with the condition that they don’t enter Westchester. You can’t feasibly stop them from entering the region itself, but you have the city—the center of rebellion—surrounded. Without explicit permission, they won’t be able to get within the city.”  
  
“And when I catch them joining the fighting in the outer regions?”  
  
Gods, is he really about to—? But, yes: this is necessary. “Then you revoke the terms of their pardon.”  
  
“Which would mean executing them.”  
  
He doesn’t answer, but his lack of answer is answer enough. Execution—it’s what anyone would do. Erik is—he isn’t doing anything that any other ruler wouldn’t also do. It’s a horrible trade-off, suggesting it to Erik, though. The intention in telling Westchester to stop fighting was always to help them regroup for another attempt: if this deal is struck with Erik, then, if a second rebellion attempt comes to fruition—and it _will_ —he will be putting his own men in a position to face execution if they’re detained. But… getting them out of Genosha is also a priority. There will be no hope of success if Westchester’s best warriors are locked up in Genosha.  
  
“Not something you want, I would gather,” Erik murmurs, cracking the knuckles on his right hand. Probably sore from taking hits for minutes on end.  
  
“No. They’ll fight. It’s their home. Of _course_ they’ll fight. _I_ would fight. But…” There’s bile in his throat, rising up and burning his chest. Walking, on and on, back toward their room, in the hallways that he used to own—that isn’t helping. “What if I made you a deal? I’ll trade you: if, should you catch them again, you promise to only imprison them, then… I’m willing to open negotiations with you, for something _you_ want.” As foolish as that is, when Erik’s requests could be _anything_ , there isn’t another option.  
  
Not beyond setting his soldiers up for potential execution.  
  
Erik’s step quickens, and it takes a concentrated effort to match it. “That’s a risky prospect. As I’m sure you’re aware, for the most part, I haven’t spared many military leaders from the regions I’ve conquered. And when the war ends, what then? What do I do with those soldiers in prison? I can’t let them go back to the region, lest they reignite another rebellion. And letting them languish in prison would deplete resources: I won’t feed prisoners on life-term. I can’t simply keep pardoning them every time they rebel.”  
  
“You could… apprentice them.” Gods forgive him. This was never supposed to happen. If it weren’t necessary... That—just keep remembering, it _is_ necessary _._ “Assign each to a soldier from your army.”  
  
“Hmmm.” Nothing about that is an outright rejection, and, if anything, Erik’s face has smoothed into something thoughtful, which, under the cragginess of his exhaustion—why wasn’t it obvious earlier just how tired Erik is?—straightens out muscles and drags him back into something undeniably human. One might even say relatable. “That’s an unnecessarily large burden on individual soldiers.” He tosses a glance over at Charles. “Convince me of the necessity.”  
  
It’s not ideal, but at least it’s a chance. “My men are skilled. You _know_ they’re skilled. You either kill that talent, or you have it working for you. And if they’re serving in the national army—“ even the term is a sour taste— “their families back in Westchester will be hesitant to oppose nationalistic decisions, lest it harm the army, and, thus, their men. You’d be gaining skilled warriors and holding a bargaining chip with which to control Westchester.”  
  
“And you? What will _you_ give me?”  
  
As much as Erik is genuinely interested in practicality, there’s little question that his mind is far more firmly on any bargain he can get from Charles. In a world where things were fair, that would mean he’d overlook something tactically: but, Erik has proven himself unlikely to do that.  
  
What is there—what can he—? If he offers too much, it will be a foolish bargain: he’ll waste bargaining tools that might come in handy if he needs to bargain again later. But it must be something Erik will take. So, what—?  
  
“I’ll promise to stop trying to sleep in the nursery.”  
  
Ah, there. That’s caught Erik’s attention.  
  
Erik slows, steps petering out to a full halt before he turns, blocking Charles’ body with his own and taking him firmly by the shoulders. Though the hallway is drafty, Erik’s hands are strangely warm, and it’s terribly easy to believe that some of the heat in his eyes—startlingly bright in the darkness—has leaked out into the rest of his body. “I would like that,” he says quietly.  
  
Charles swallows. “And _I_ would like my soldiers to be safe. Do we have a deal?”  
  
A pause, a moment of thought, and then: “I’ll release the lower level men. Your officers stay in Genosha.”  
  
Alex, Sean, Armando, Kitty—so many others. But… it’s a start. If the soldiers are out, then it will make it easier to extract the officers later. This is progress. Baby steps.  
  
“All right. Deal.”  
  
Brushing by Erik, he turns to continue on down the hallway, and though Erik’s grip pulls taut for a moment, Erik quickly concedes and allows himself to be pulled along. Vindictively, it’s rather satisfying, to be the one in the lead, yanking Erik behind him. If he played his cards right, he could have this more often. Maybe. Possibly. Not in the ways it would count most. But… in trivial, everyday matters—even in things not _quite_ so trivial—Erik is surprisingly eager to allow him his way. He _could_ have Erik trailing after him, panting like a dog in heat if he’d get himself together, learn to use—  
  
But _facing_ it. Gods, the idea of facing this, knowing it so well as to _use_ it—the night is not freezing enough to account for the goosebumbs popping up along his skin.  
  
“Charles.”  
  
“Hmm?” He doesn’t stop walking.  
  
“You’re afraid.”  
  
No question. Only a statement. “It’s nothing.”  
  
“I can feel it in the bond—“  
  
How fascinating it would be, to be allowed to study something so intricate. Like the roses in the garden, with their different scents and colors, all waiting to be cultivated and interbred—it’s a pity he missed out on so much science in favor of statecraft.  
  
At this point, it probably would have been better still if he’d bothered to take lessons in bearer biology. Knowing that Erik can sense distress on him—in the same way that wearing an article of Erik’s clothing, or, indeed, inhaling the scent directly from Erik himself, offers a calming effect—it’s unsettling. He’s practically an open book.  
  
“It’s nothing, and I’d rather you drop it.”  
  
Though nothing about Erik’s expression suggests he finds that order agreeable, he does let the matter drop with nothing more forceful than a sidelong glance and a tightening along the lines of his mouth.  
  
Pity that seeing that means admitting that Erik has pulled even with him again, rendering useless that charming concept of being the one to lead. It was never expected to last, but no one with functioning emotions would find any sort of placidity at the prospect of losing the tiny modicum of control that he’d scraped into being.  
  
By the time they reach the door to the guest room—truly disorienting, not to make for his own room, but for a place so impersonal instead—silence has settled heavily, and while it ought to be oppressive, it smacks of the familiar, sliding in like a familiar friend whose presence has come to be expected. This is the best that can be hoped for: this icy peace in which neither of them is actively lashing out.  
  
And, of course, it doesn’t last.  
  
They’ve barely made it through the door before Erik is slamming it closed with a force that echoes alarmingly throughout the room, raising the hair on Charles’ arms. Too loud—too abrasive, and his nerves are already shot to Hell, and wiped clean of the capacity to deal with loud noises in the silence. Less so, even, under Erik’s concentrated offensive.  
  
The noise is still echoing when Erik pivots, latching his hands onto the first thing he reaches—Charles’ wrists—and pushing backward, forcing the both of them to frantically coordinate their movement. The trickiness of the step trips them up, and it’s hardly fair that he should have bruises for Erik’s lack of forethought, but it’s his back to the wall just the same.  
  
How fantastic. Worthy of a laugh, surely, if things are thought through to their logical conclusion.  
  
“What is it?” Erik murmurs, almost dreamy, rubbing his thumbs over the pulse points within his grasp.  
  
This far along, and Erik still can’t figure these things out. Gods help them both, but that _must_ be purposeful blindness. Erik is a brilliant man—truly intelligent—and this degree of stupidity is, frankly, embarrassing on his behalf.  
  
“Let me say no.”  
  
And here he’d not been planning to answer. The things that desperation will do—it’s truly disturbing.  
  
Erik’s warmth seeps into Charles’ chest, straight through his shirt—he’s been wearing his sleep shirt this whole time, tossed on when they’d headed for the Danger Room. That shirt, that flimsy thing that he _ought_ to wear to bed, and which he probably would, if nakedness—or, at best, a pair of bottoms—weren’t just… easier.  
  
In lieu of speaking, he presses one hand to Erik’s shoulder—something of a feat when Erik has a hand about his wrist, though Erik goes along easily enough, allowing Charles’ motion, despite the firm maintenance of his grip.  
  
Much more importantly, he takes a step back when Charles shoves.  
  
“I—“ Words. An explanation is necessary. And—shouldn’t this be easier to say?  
  
Wanting… things—it isn’t simple, in this tangled mess of noxious desire and love and bitterness that they’ve created for themselves. But Erik is—is warm, and very solid, with a realness under Charles’ touch that is startling and astounding. How he parts his lips, breathing out, studying Charles from too-bright eyes that have sharpened with arousal and dilated with lack of light—everything seeps into the blood and moves it along a little faster, urging him to curl his fingers, to bear down onto the skin of Erik’s shoulder. He does, flexing—and it might have been easy, to push on through that and go further, if not for the edge of black lettering on his own skin that he can see peeking out from between Erik’s fingers.  
  
“I need to be able to have some sort of say.”  
  
So, so much, that has to be a reality, or everything is going to crumble into what it was just minutes ago, down in the Danger Room. That anger is unavoidable, if there’s no other outlet.  
  
No response. But… it isn’t a refusal, nor does Erik particularly look as though he’s thrown the idea out. On the contrary: he appears to be waiting, studying Charles and weighing the merit, same as he always did during wartime with any idea that Charles presented to him.  
  
“If you want to fuck an unresponsive body, then by all means, Erik, carry on with what you’re doing.”  
  
Neither of them wants that. They wouldn’t be having this conversation otherwise, surely. It has to—has to be something—because if Erik is going to demand things he has no moral right to demand, denying Erik totally is impossible, in the context of war and loser’s rights.  
  
Because losers don’t have rights. Conquerors _decide_ rights.  
  
 _Erik_ decides rights.  
  
So… think. What’s a bargain—what’s negotiable, tolerable? Erik is arresting: in his looks, in his movement, in his thought. His manner alone—those days in the tent together, when Erik was—was—it made wanting a tangible thing. And if it was something to want, then it has to have remained tolerable, and it’s a piece to bargain over now.  
  
Erik can fuck him. He can handle Erik fucking him. It isn’t _Erik_ he doesn’t want, but the situation, and if the situation can be changed….  
  
“I want you,” he says softly, wrenching the words out of his own chest and twisting them into a tangle that will ensnare Erik. The best lies, after all, are mostly truth. “But I _can’t_ want you if none of this is about what _I_ want. You want willing, and I can’t be that if I can’t choose.”  
  
Leaning in a little closer, he slides his hand up to the curve of Erik’s shoulder, just where it meets his neck, and palms the flesh there, rubbing his thumb over it and dragging the skin a little way out of place. The hold at his wrist flexes, caressing before loosening: Erik keeps his grip, but it’s hardly so restrictive now.  
  
And his _face_ ….  
  
This is want. _This_ : the tension that’s burrowing into every line of Erik’s face and freezing it, masking over his ease and drawing his lips thin into a parody of a tripwire, where any word that passes out of his mouth would be wrong and not enough, lacking the eloquence of the sheer life lurking in his eyes.  
  
And he’s waiting. He’s patient. He’s listening.  
  
“If you want me to choose you, you have to _let_ me choose.”  
  
Erik’s tongue runs along his bottom lip, wetting it, as his mouth creaks open wider. When the words come, they’re hoarse, and they sound nothing like Erik—there’s no confidence about them, but just the brittleness of vulnerability.  
  
It’s beautiful in ways that don’t make sense.  
  
“ _Would_ you choose me?”  
  
Was that ever a question? How can Erik not _know_?  
  
“I _did_ , Erik. I ruined my entire life choosing you.”  
  
Erik’s sharp twitch of his lip, the way he cocks his head—it says everything for him.  
  
 _You tried to negate your choice._  
  
It’s true. He did. Because Erik tried to take everything else. He still is. It’s a choice inside of a cage, but if Charles can make the walls a little further from him, he might just be able to widen the cage back out to somewhere near the size of a functioning world.  
  
“Twice a week at minimum, all right?” he murmurs, tipping his face upward and—gods, what is he doing?—nuzzling the underside of Erik’s jaw. The bone is slightly elevated on one side, thanks to the way Erik has his head cocked, but Erik doesn’t try to correct it, keeping his head up and leaving it to Charles to nose his way around the skin. A little like dealing with a skittish animal, he’s probably thinking: hold still, lest Charles bolt away. “But you let me choose when it happens. You may try to initiate, but if I’m not interested right at that moment, you heed me when I tell you no.” A tiny dab of his tongue, and—oh, that’s a shiver. Erik shivered.  
  
Another touch, another twitch. This would take Erik apart. Only a little touch—and it would break him down, claiming back chunks of time when Erik’s word isn’t law.  
  
A law can’t be spoken if Erik is too enraptured to speak at all.  
  
To think—to be the one to _put_ him there. It’s _good_.  
  
“That means less chance that you’ll conceive quickly.”  
  
How unfortunate: Erik has regained speech. Though, it doesn’t sound particularly smooth, and the gravel in it is unsettlingly appealing, enough to scrape over Charles’ nerves and draw out his own shiver, in time with the kiss he presses onto Erik’s jaw, open-mouthed, and with a sharp sigh. Like this—Erik tastes good, with a hint of salt from the sweat of their fight, and the drag of stubble against the tongue is odd, but not bad.  
  
“I suppose, then, that you’ll have to decide: is quickly getting me with child more important to you than _I_ am?”  
  
As bald as that statement is, it’s accurate. Erik must know it: nothing but understanding could freeze him so quickly; when the ice shatters, he surges forward, pulling up just short of contact, and then drifts his touch down lightly, stroking at the inside of Charles’ elbow with the pads of his fingers. His other hand still encircles the wrist bearing the writing, but he’s more hesitant about it, cradling rather than restraining, and watching Charles with a heated stare almost reminiscent of a scientist—profoundly enraptured, and more than a bit guarded, when the discovery hasn’t been made quite yet.  
  
Seconds fall away. Half a minute. Time fades into a minute.  
  
And then: “You.” Half a breath: his chest contracts, costing him an inch or so of height as he slumps down into the exhale, meeting Charles’ eyes steadily. “Of course you’re more important.”  
  
Oh. Hm. That’s—it is—looking overwhelms, in the face of that, and he leans forward to rest his forehead on Erik’s shoulder. A choice. Knowing that it isn’t any moment, at the whim of Erik’s will—that it can hinge on things like desire, and on when he’s disposed more favorably toward Erik.  
  
Less like sleeping with his conqueror; more like sleeping with _Erik_.  
  
“I want your word,” he mumbles, tapping his fingers against Erik’s shoulder. The vibrations jolt up to his knuckles, grounding the touch.  
  
Of all the things Erik has just said, his lack of hesitation in answering is, somehow, the most soothing of the lot: “You have it. Twice a week minimum. But you decide when.”  
  
The breath vanishes right out of his chest. Funny, he hadn’t been aware he’d been holding back his breathing. There had certainly been no indication that letting it go would free him up into slumping forward, into sighing against Erik and relaxing; and Erik, tentatively at first, bringing his arms up to loop around behind him, big hands spanning the expanse of Charles’ shoulder blades.   
  
He’s being held, being hemmed in, but there’s comfort in it, and safety, more than the crippling fear of being unable to step away if he wants.  
  
There hasn’t been that feeling since before they killed Shaw.  
  
But, believing that will last—that’s ahead of the proof. Any belief is, at the moment, premature, regardless of whether his heart is jumping at the chance to trust. Listening to what his emotions wanted only ever landed him in this mess in the first place through a snap-second loss of control that resulted in an imprint. Bit problematic, this concept of listening to emotions. Logic is more reliable, and undeniably far less painful. And right now? Every ounce of logic is screaming that, while Erik might mean what he says, in the heat of things, it would be easy to renege. But Erik’s promises have always been good. He doesn’t _lie_. Isn’t that something?  
  
There is, of course, a first time for everything, untruths included. Even so…  
  
Trust flickers, but—it’s there. It isn’t dead yet. And Erik…  
  
Erik usually does what he promises.  
  
Twitching his fingers again, he fixes his eyes on the skin of Erik’s neck and very decidedly doesn’t look up for any sort of confirmation or denial. The next days will play that out, undoubtedly. Nothing about it will be simple, but, for the moment, it’s a lovely dream to think it might be, and, speaking of dreams: “I’d like to go to bed now,” he murmurs, pushing until Erik steps back. Charles draws along with him, slotting against the empty spaces of his body, letting Erik take his weight and bear him along to the bed.  
  
No eating him alive tonight—the bed means nothing. It’s just a bed. How very long it’s been since he’s had the luxury of saying that.  
  
“Now,” he breathes out, half to himself, but easily in Erik’s hearing, considering how closely they’re pressed, “I think I might actually be able to sleep.”


	25. Chapter 25

They ride out in the morning. Erik deigns to allow him his own horse, and though there’s an unmistakable warning in his manner, he doesn’t say much when Charles mounts up. It’s only once they’re both in the saddle, preparing to leave the yard, that he tilts his head in Charles’ direction and, with a quiet shade of emotional void, murmurs, “If you run, David will be entirely in my care.” He might as well be speaking about the weather for all the embellishment he shows, which would be insulting, if not for the blatant effort it’s costing him to hold himself in check.  
  
Erik’s capability to effect such coolness is, in some sense, enviable, but Charles has never been much good at blocking his emotions: too sweet of face to lie, Raven had told him once, and it’s probably true. He’s always cared too much, and he has a habit of showing it.  
  
Any hope he might have had that today would be different is quickly swept away when he feels his mouth twitch; he turns his face away, staring resolutely off at the gate, and ignoring Erik’s strained sigh.  
  
Yet, despite a less than auspicious start, the ride improves. Somewhere along the course they’ve set around the city wall, the pleasantness of the day leaks out of the sky and the air and into Charles’ manner. Erik has troops stationed all around the walls or the parts of the town surrounding the walls, but the area where the general heading this siege is camped is on the other side, over by the main gates, rather than near those that operate as a backdoor to the palace. It makes for a very nice ride, and it’s a perfect autumn day, crisp and cool, but with the sun shining and only a very light breeze. It’s nearly impossible not to relax back into the saddle, and when Erik plucks an apple off a tree by the walls and tosses it at him, he catches it out of reflex. Wasting a perfectly good apple would be something of a crime—they’re so good this time of year: he bites into it, eyes floating closed at the crunch and the sudden burst of sweet juice. Apples in the fall are the food of the gods themselves.  
  
Steering his horse—a pleasant gray gelding that Charles has always been fond of—closer to Charles’—an amiable, unfailingly reliable bay mare—Erik reaches out and tugs playfully at his sleeve, grinning when the motion pulls Charles’ hand away from his mouth, depriving him of another bite. Rather rude, that: these apples are not to be missed, but—damn it, Erik’s teasing him. Though, with a goal in mind: his grip on Charles’ sleeve is quite insistent, pulling on him until the apple and Charles’ hand are in the gap between the horses, where Erik can slide his fingers down and pluck the apple from his grasp.  
  
“My thanks,” he quips, blinking quickly enough that the sun sparkles off his eyes and reflects in his smile. He takes a sizeable bite, moaning theatrically when the piece breaks off into his mouth. “Mmm. Good.”  
  
“Don’t talk with your mouth full.” As reprimands go, it’s pathetically weak, utterly lacking in venom. And—he’s smiling, albeit softly, and perhaps not with the same enthusiasm as Erik, but… well, the apples _are_ quite good, the day is lovely, and Erik is being accommodating. “Give me back my apple; you could have gotten one of your own if you fancied a snack.”  
  
Chuckling, Erik flips the apple through the air, back toward Charles. His horse twitches a bit at the sudden movement, but it’s a reliable beast, and Charles rides the movement out easily, plucking the apple out of the air and pressing it to his mouth for another, very pointed, bite. The crack that sounds when he bites into it is especially satisfying, and it gets Erik laughing, a fond glow settling into his gaze.  
  
“Careful now: you’ll get juice on your uniform.”  
  
“What, this monstrosity?” He huffs. “Good riddance.” Too true: he’s dressed in his actual soldier’s uniform, which, when Erik insisted this morning that he wear it, was the cause of a rather terse silence between them. This is what he wore while they’d been hunting Shaw—though this is, predictably, a cleaner version.  
  
The one he’d been wearing when Shaw sliced his side and leg open has probably been burned.  
  
The uniform itself is nothing special. Whereas Erik’s uniform is black and trimmed in silver—Genosha’s colors, and decidedly not what Erik wore while hunting Shaw—his own is a dark brown, buttoned up the front and ending in a lapelled collar, heavily starched today like it often wasn’t when they were chasing Shaw, and with patch pockets over each breast, buttoned down and bearing the emblem of his rank. The jacket is belted with leather that is a shade darker than the cloth, and with a gold buckle. Likewise, the trousers—well fitted, though flexible—are the same color as the shirt, and his boots are made of the same leather as his belt—which holds his sword—and reaching up to just below his knee.  
  
On the campaign against Shaw, this uniform became as natural to him as breathing, and slipping back into it is like coming home, if home were horrible and condemning. There’s no forgetting what he’s wearing, though it embraces him with such fondness that he can almost believe it’s developed the capability to think. If it weren’t now so controversial to be wearing it—bearers can’t serve in the armed forces—it would feel welcoming, soothing.  
  
The fact that it can’t be allowed to feel that way is the most disturbing thing of all.  
  
“Much better than formal wear, I should think,” Erik points out.  
  
Quite right. Formal wear is stiff, with little room to breathe. Erik more often has to wear that these days—though that will likely change, once Charles is trusted enough to begin making public appearances with him.  
  
That’s not much of an endorsement for good behavior, frankly.  
  
Instead of arguing the point, Charles snorts lightly and jerks his head toward the road, rearranging the reins in his hands. Call it preparation. Call it hope. “You mind?”  
  
 _Foolish_ , a part of him says, to be this comfortable, and to let things slide into this spot so easily. Erik will know what he’s saying without any further explanation, and that degree of seamless cooperation shouldn’t be encouraged. But—he’s been cooped up for so long, first in Westchester during the siege, and then in Genosha. Riding a little is such a tempting prospect.  
  
Though, not a given one: Erik glances behind them at the squadron of soldiers trailing them. The thing is, he’s not wrong to do so. They’re already pushing the limits with the game of apple tossing: if these were men they were close to, as it had ended up being in the campaign against Shaw, it wouldn’t matter much at all. Those men had been as familiar with them in leisure as in combat. These men, however, have the stiffness of soldiers under new command: there’s a tension permeating them, resting in the fact that they don’t yet know what to expect of Erik, and exacerbated by his role as King of Genosha.  
  
Which is why it’s a surprise when Erik signals to his second-in-command, who’s riding back and to the left. The man jumps at the summons, quickly spurring his horse up to Erik’s side, and giving him a quick salute. Again with the formality: these men don’t know Erik much yet, or else Erik wouldn’t be making them stand on ceremony.  
  
Whatever else Erik might be, he’s a friend to his soldiers, and he operates in their midst, rather than constantly above them. If he’s standing on protocol, then he hasn’t yet formed a bond that allows him to do otherwise.  
  
“Yes, Sir,” the man says once he’s dropped his hand.  
  
Erik gives him a prim nod. “Hold the head of the column for me: Xavier and I are going to ride ahead.”  
  
 _Definitely_ not at ease if he’s using Charles’ surname. But: to the soldier’s credit, he snaps to his orders with admirable efficiency, saluting Erik’s command and falling in at the head of the column, just before Erik shoots Charles a quick grin and then digs his heels into the gelding’s sides.  
  
To hell with _that_ : it’s the first day he’s gotten much fresh air since Westchester fell, and if Erik thinks he’s going to so easily take the lead in this, he’s much mistaken.  
  
Spurring his own heals into the bay’s sides, Charles surges forward after Erik, quickly drawing even with him as they take off, the horses’ hooves thundering along the road.  
  
All that time locked up within palaces, and now he’s finally let lose to slice through the wind and to strain his muscles a bit, locking his legs down against the saddle and _going_. He reins to the right, guiding his horse closer to Erik’s than is probably wise, but Erik, when he notices, only barks out a laugh to the wind, his eyes watering against the burn of the flowing air, and shouts a good-natured curse at Charles.  
  
Perfect. Better still if he can outrace Erik, wrapped up in the pounding hooves and the dust from the road choking him until he laughs and laughs, throwing the noise into the wind. It’s been too long since he’s done this. How spectacularly amazing, to push against the air, to outrun problems.  
  
It can’t last long: they can’t get too far ahead, and Erik does eventually give him the signal to slow. Disappointing, but it isn’t out of line: it’s not unreasonable to keep near the troops. They’ll probably have to double back, as it is.  
  
“Saddle-sore?” Erik asks, raking a hand through his hair and tipping his head back to shake the locks loose, laughing a little in Charles’ general direction. “It’s been too long since we’ve ridden.”  
  
“Not sore at all. But you’re losing your touch. Think I saw you slipping there at the end.”  
  
Another bark of laughter. “Banish the thought. I’ll always be able to outride you.”  
  
Outfight? Yes. Outride? No. “Funny, since you never could before.” Erik may be better with a sword, but when a message needed to be sent, it had been Charles who had mounted up and run it for them.  
  
Erik grins, bearing his not inconsiderable number of teeth. It shouldn’t be, but it’s strangely endearing. “Insolent little cur.”  
  
“Those who can’t win toss insults,” he sing-songs, laughing and drawing the horse to the side, putting a wider gap between himself and Erik.  
  
How stunning to think that, for the first time in years, that’s merely for effect, rather than out of anything darker. The loose, relaxed give of his muscles has become a foreign sensation, but—  
  
What is he doing?  
  
Erik is not his friend. Once upon a time he was, but with a shift in power there’s a shift in everything else as well, and that a situation so relaxed as this is still possible carries the potential for another shake-up. He’ll never find his footing like this, not when it’s in his own heart—his own _life_ , best be perfectly honest—that the instability is occurring.  
  
Clenching his fingers more firmly into the reins, he kicks the horse into a brisk trot, albeit with no real plan to the motion. All it boils down to is the overwhelming desire to move, aggravated, worse than before, by the fact that it’s the prospect of his own imprisonment chasing right on the heels of his consent.  
  
What is he _doing_?  
  
Any other prisoner of war who was taken as a spouse would have been forced down so effectively that there would be no forgetting—but Erik mixes sweetness with his orders and their history with the present. It shouldn’t matter: there’s an inked signature that proves the impossibility of anything genuine—  
  
But that’s just the thing: it’s no impossibility. It is a startlingly real prospect. It would be deceptively easy to slide into routine, to allow Erik to subsume him, and to forget what all this _means_ , and, most of all, what it’s destroyed.  
  
Erik loves him. Erik _loves_ him.  
  
Despite a nearly arresting desire to launch into a full gallop, Charles overrides impulse and pulls the horse to a stop, dropping a quick pat to its neck. Poor thing: he’s been terribly indecisive in what he wants, and the horse must be growing weary of it. Same is probably true of Erik’s horse, who’s playing shadow to Charles’ own snap movements. True to pattern, behind Charles’ line of sight, Erik’s horse pauses, breaking up the noise of hoof beats. Erik must have reined his mount in, probably to try to wait out Charles’ sudden wavering.  
  
Fair point to Erik, though: emotional stability has hardly been a priority as of late. But why shouldn’t confusion be allowed? Isn’t there a right to that, when the sort of decisions that now need making are things that….  
  
He shivers, despite the warmth of the day. Every inch of him is screaming to turn away from this line of thinking, but hiding from it won’t make it disappear, which really only leaves the truth: these are decisions that, as King of Westchester—as the non-bearer he was supposed to be—he was never supposed to have to face.  
  
“Charles?”  
  
Erik has no right to sound confused. None at all. He pressed things this far, pushing on with good will and affection so earnest that it’s insulting. Purely, bitterly insulting, that he thinks that good will justifies his use of force.  
  
 _“Charles?”_ More insistent this time. Charles’ spine stiffens at the sound, but he doesn’t turn. Exactly what does Erik think he’s going to be able to do—?  
  
Oh. Erik… thinks he’s going to run. For all his projected confidence concerning David’s status as bargaining chip, the worry is still there, glaring over the expanse of road between them. It doesn’t require turning and looking to know it’s there.  
  
It inevitably exists, because Erik has been given no reason to banish it.  
  
Charles forces out his breath, squeezing his legs against the seat of the saddle and shuddering until it ripples down his back and dies out at the bottom of his spine. Love Erik, hate Erik, run or stay, cooperate or fight—he was never this changeable before. It’s weak and irresolute, nothing like a king, and the sudden change isn’t comforting, doesn’t feel like _him_. Westchester isn’t coming back on its own, Erik isn’t about to hand him the kingship, and if he drags himself around day in and day out, lost when accosted with the new way of life Erik is forcing him into, he’ll never find a way out.  
  
Knowing that, though, hasn’t pulled him out of his actions. It isn’t _him_ , but, if not him, then who is it? This _is_ him, so much as he forces it to be, and these inexplicable impulse decisions—these bouts of temper—need to stop. Bond or not—it doesn’t matter. Yes, matter: mind over matter. Take the biological urges and recognize them for what they are, and beat them that way. They may have stabilized since the wedding night, but they aren’t going away entirely—not ever—and being ruled by them is worse than useless.  
  
Of course it is. Pain is never a reason to stop a fight: why would a bond be? Enemies don’t back away because you’re hurt, because you’re on your back and can’t come to terms with being there. But, here he is, paralyzed by whatever has sucked the drive out of him.  
  
He should be playing Erik with every ounce of skill he possesses. If getting down on his knees and sucking Erik’s brain out through his cock is what it takes to gain his ends, he damn well should be doing it. He should have done it _yesterday_.  
  
Even knowing all that, he can’t make himself turn around.  
  
“It’s nothing,” he calls back. Good—voice measured, tone light. If not for the—  
  
“It doesn’t _feel_ like nothing. You’re unsettled.”  
  
Ah, yes, the ever-present, lie-detecting bond. It may not tell Erik that he’s lying directly, but a healthy dose of the kind of uncertainty he’s almost certainly projecting between them is going to inform Erik of exactly how false a smile is.  
  
In which case, a smile may not be the best course to take. Far more natural, too, to effect a lopsided frown when Erik draws up next to him, eyes narrowed and back stiff with worry and—yes, suspicion. It’s practically a familiar friend by now, coming from Erik.  
  
“Sorry, no, it’s just that—“ Deepening his frown, he angles his body toward Erik, dropping his shoulder and leaving himself open. “I thought I felt something. Not you, but—“  
  
“Telepathy?”  
  
Hook, line, and sinker. Thankfully. If it hadn’t worked, another lie would have been hard to come by this quickly. “Yes. We’re close to the houses around the wall, and I suppose—“ The best lies are the ones told with truth, and his body is well use to embarrassment, when he’s been laid so bare in the last few days: attributing that to a snatch of misdirected telepathy isn’t difficult. It’s merely a case of letting go and allowing those emotions to float to the surface, to rush into his motions as he tips away from Erik, settling back low into the saddle with movements closer to nervous fidgeting that an actual readjustment. “It’s easy to catch thoughts when I’m not shielding properly.”  
  
Erik nudges his horse a few steps closer. “That’s not usually a problem for you.”  
  
And the best way to sell a lie? Offer up something that has a cost. Something not easily admitted, or something disagreeable. “No. But, normally, I’m not working so hard to shield myself from someone _inside_ my head.”  
  
Silence. And then: “Charles—“  
  
“I’d rather not discuss it.”  
  
“You’d rather not discuss _anything_ about the bond.”  
  
“Quite right.”  
  
“You don’t need to shield so hard from me. I won’t listen in without warning you.”  
  
That’s a promise to be filed away for later. “But you _could_.”  
  
Erik pauses, and, for a few seconds, the only sounds are the breaths of the horses, and their feet on the road. “Yes,” he agrees finally. He does at least have to be commended for his honesty. “But you’d feel it if I went deeper than surface thoughts.”  
  
For a conversation that is fundamentally a lie, this one is taking a surprisingly honest turn. Sitting up a fraction straighter, he very pointedly doesn’t look at Erik.  
  
“It isn’t _you_ , you know,” he offers, staring down the road in front of them. It’s dusty—it’s been rather dry lately, and this is a heavily traveled road, given its location between the walls and the town that surrounds them: plenty of people to kick up the dust. “I’d feel this way about anyone with direct access to my mind.”  
  
“The kind of access you’ve always had to all of us?”  
  
“It isn’t the same.”  
  
“Why not?” Said bluntly, with no time in between for thought. Erik is, in ways like this, always so relentless. If he didn’t sometimes cut quite so close to the truth, it might be more bearable.  
  
“I’ve grown up with this. I know the consequences of misuse. You think I never abused my gift? There’s a reason I’ve learned to keep it in check, you know.” Or something along those lines. People think it would be such a luxury to have the final card to play, but they never consider what it’s like to have to live with knowing you possess that degree of power.  
  
Fearing oneself is something he’d always tried to educate out of his mutant soldiers, but, in truth, he may never have quite succeeded in rooting it out of himself.  
  
“Leave it alone. We were enjoying the ride a few minutes ago, weren’t we? Couldn’t we just settle on that?”  
  
When he looks over at Erik, he’s met with an unabashed, though unreadable stare. No one is quite so hard to figure as Erik, when he wants to be. Perhaps it’s the angles of his features, so far from Charles’ own rounder face, that give him enough of an edge to shave off all emotion when he wants to—or it may have been his childhood in those camps—but, somewhere along the line, Erik has learned to disguise his thoughts under a cloak of measured intensity.  
  
“Yes,” Erik agrees finally, expression unchanging. “We ought to double back to the soldiers anyway, ride into camp with them. It would look odd if we were to trot up on our own.”  
  
He nods, and, tugging on the reins, pivots the bay back in Erik’s direction. “All right.”  
  
“Charles…”  
  
Not now: he’s hardly equipped for any of Erik’s overtures right this moment. The middle of a road on horseback is by no means an ideal venue for emotional chatter. “What?” Already, he’s nearly back past Erik, off in the direction of the army.  
  
 _Nearly_ being the operative word: Erik spurs his horse forward, cutting him off as much with a stony frown as with his horse. Bloody hell, what is he—? Charles’ bay’s head shoots up, tossing, and the creature snorts, irritated at being blocked by Erik’s mount. “What the hell, Erik—“  
  
And, then, without warning, Erik’s lips crack into a tight grin. “It’s nice to see you back in that uniform.”  
  
What?  
  
But Erik only huffs out a breath of laughter and spins his horse around, breaking into a trot off down the road. That—what—why—? But, no, nothing, and in lieu of being left behind and having to listen to Erik’s taunts about his lack of horsemanship, he, not to be outdone, kicks his horse into a canter and speeds by Erik, ignoring the delighted laugh that chases after him, shortly followed by Erik himself.  
  
It doesn’t dawn on him until they’ve gone nearly halfway: Erik never turned round to check that Charles was following.  
  
\-------------------  
  
By this point in time, Erik’s generals are almost as familiar to Charles as his own. When hunting Shaw, they’d both selected their own officers; they’d then combined forces, with their men collectively answering to both of them at times when discussion was possible, and to whichever of them was leading the mission that day when quick, decisive command was the only option. Usually, Erik led in the field with Charles drawing up the strategy, so as it usually stood, Charles’ men answered to Erik in the heat of actual combat, and everyone reported to Charles when the dust cleared.  
  
As a result, he’d gotten to know Erik’s officers fairly well. He’d liked Azazel, to the point where, when Erik was otherwise occupied, he’d occasionally had drinks with the man. They hadn’t been close, but Azazel had been an agreeable person to pass the time with if the opportunity presented itself. Even if he hadn’t been, he’s a good general, able to think quickly on his feet: skilled enough that, for the most part, he didn’t need to exercise the dormant streak of cruelty that caused Charles intermittent worry: it had been easy enough to bury that viciousness and explain it away as the result of a solider who’d seen too much war.  
  
Facing Azazel now is a little like a kick to the teeth. Worse, actually, since Erik didn’t warn him about _who_ was commanding the offensive at Westchester. To be fair, he should have asked Erik, but a briefing still would have been appreciated.  
  
Probably Erik thought he was being kinder not to give him the time to let it fester. In some ways it actually might have been more humane, but, right this second, it doesn’t feel that way.  
  
“Commander,” Azazel greets him after he’s saluted Erik, offering a deep bow.  
  
Commander: something that he no longer is, that he doesn’t deserve, and that Azazel is well aware has been stripped from him. There’s no trace of mockery in Azazel’s words, but the now-defunct title operates as a reminder. Just more salt in the wound. Though, there’s a good chance that being addressed as anything else would have been just as cruel a reminder. Nothing is going to satisfy in this situation, and he might as well recognize that now.  
  
Anyhow, the bow levels things out: military officers are usually saluted these days, whereas the kind of bow Azazel has just offered him is far more characteristic of the kind given to an important non-combatant.  
  
It’s what’s due to the spouse of a military officer.  
  
Charles only just manages not to grimace.  
  
Admitting to being offended would do nothing but expose his weakness and offer a future area to target—and Azazel is too good a general not to note down weakness, regardless of if it’s being displayed by a current ally or an enemy. So, keeping his face blank, he returns Azazel’s motion with a sharp nod. But that’s not enough—if he lets this go now, it’s only going to grow worse. Everyone is going to regard him like this, and Azazel is almost certainly being kinder about it than most: the slight hint of disrespect in that bow is nothing compared to those who would openly spit on him for wearing a military uniform. Though Erik hasn’t told him, it wouldn’t be surprising to find that there are those in the military who would actively like to see him take the traditional punishment doled out to a bearer for hiding what he is and joining the military: public flogging.  
  
Like hell Erik would ever agree to that. It would show far too much skin in public, and gods know that Erik isn’t inclined to share the sight of what he’s made very clear is his. Anyone who requests that punishment is all but offering Erik his or her throat, nearly asking for it to be ripped out in a fit of possessiveness. There’s always the chance that Erik would even oblige.  
  
How charming.  
  
So: leave it to Erik to defend him, or defend himself—and that doesn’t always require violence. Though Erik may not have learned so, the best counter is sometimes that which burrows into the mind and the emotions, rather than a sword to the gut or a fist to the face.  
  
“Azazel,” he greets once he’s straightened his neck back into a ramrod straight line, set perfectly with his spine. Then he returns Azazel’s bow with every ounce of attention to flawless posture that he can be bothered to possess.  
  
There, then: two can play at wordless challenge.  
  
Erik snorts lightly under his breath, but he doesn’t say anything, and once Charles’ pulls back up out of the bow, Erik has schooled his expression down into low burning amusement. Azazel hasn’t been so lucky: he’s caught with his both his brows making a bid for his hairline, and the sharp quirk of a grin.  
  
Good sense of humor, has Azazel. It might be that being offered insult has grabbed a bit more of his respect than any traditional greeting could have.  
  
At the very least, it hasn’t done any harm—not to his standing with either Erik or Azazel. In fact, Erik’s casual glance showcases the warmth of his gaze—the amusement and, unless he’s very much mistaken—Erik is _impressed_. That isn’t immediately evident in how he smothers the expression, folding his arms behind his back and staring over at Azazel impassively—but it’s _there_.  
  
Azazel quirks his brow: another test, then, this one for Erik. Just how controlling is he planning to be? And does he still think his husband capable and fitting to purport himself in this environment?  
  
One thing he’ll say for Erik: he’s not particularly fussed over what other people think of his high regard for Charles’ intelligence.  
  
“I think you earned that,” Erik answers Azazel with a small shrug.  
  
Azazel just grins. Seems he thinks the same. It’s going to be like this for a good long time, isn’t it? Being tested, being tried by people whose respect he used to command effortlessly.  
  
In most cases, the situation probably won’t smooth over as easily as it has just now. Azazel has proven surprisingly willing to accept him back with high status and to let the issue drop without any further challenge. It won’t always be like that.  
  
“Any change since yesterday?” Erik asks, dismissing the last vestiges of the topic entirely.  
  
Meaning: did that horrid speech urging surrender do any good?  
  
Azazel just shrugs. “Some. No threats have been shouted down at us from the walls today. Pity. I miss them. Such clever things they said about my mother.” He tucks his hands behind his back, mirroring Erik. “But the improvement is hard to measure. Because the city is walled, unless people wish to leave their homes and exit the city, we have no way of telling whether they have stopped actively assisting the resistance.”  
  
And here is another benefit that Azazel brings to his job: he’s efficient, both in his actions and in things as basic as his speech and wording.  
  
It’s actually rather fascinating, how Azazel’s voice is the slightest bit stilted: Azazel was raised on the outer edges of the West among a small clan of family members who remained mostly separated from society, and while everyone now speaks the same language—as decreed by Shaw—Shaw was not entirely able to root out accents: Azazel works very hard to hide the hint of one that he has, but, as a result, his words are often too perfect to the point of sounding artificial.  
  
Erik nods. “Winter’s coming, and they had no chance to take in their crops this year: I’m told that what’s left has been taken in by those outside the wall—but I’d like to think you’re sufficiently skilled at your job so as to keep that food from being smuggled into the upper town.” Leave it to Erik to weave a threat into his expectations.  
  
Luckily, Azazel is used to it. Possibly, it’s a bit of a challenge for him—a welcome game. Gods know he doesn’t get much else to do out here during a siege. For something that causes such a large loss of life, laying siege to a city is remarkably boring. Really, it’s only a lot of waiting and guarding—and Azazel doesn’t have a partner with him to waylay boredom. Not like himself and Erik.  
  
“Yes, My Lord,” Azazel agrees, though he breaks the formality with a sharp grin of too-white teeth that are nearly blinding against the red of his skin. “The problem is not the city. The problem is the outlying settlements.”  
  
Erik’s shoulders stiffen. “I’m aware.”  
  
Keeping quiet would probably be the safest option, but—these days, passing up an opportunity to undermine Erik is tantamount to falling in with Erik’s cause. “Not aware _enough_.”  
  
Not surprisingly, both Erik and Azazel snap around to look at him, Azazel with the beginnings of a toothy grin—the man really does enjoy a good bit of potentially dangerous irreverence—and a set of a raised eyebrows in Erik’s case.  
  
He half expects some biting quip from Azazel about bearers and military advice, but it seems Azazel does have some degree of self-preservation, to the point where he hides his words behind his smile and peers over at Erik with too much anticipation for it to be well-intentioned.  
  
But, for the moment, Erik’s actions give him nothing with which to amuse himself. Though his brows are halfway up to his hairline, his tone is stable, and he hardly moves toward Charles, content to shift his weight from one foot to the other. “And what would you suggest?”  
  
“Nothing.”  
  
The lines of Erik’s frown carve move deeply down into his face. Good. He understands, then, what’s just been presented to him. “What’s prompted your recalcitrance _this_ time?” As drawn-out and long-suffering as his words sound, one would think Erik is anticipating a good long stretch of this sort of behavior.  
  
Even so: he answered.  
  
Interesting. Charles had half expected to be reminded that his advice is no longer considered vital—that Erik is doing him a favor by listening at all. For Erik to concede to him that power play, and in the presence of a witness….  
  
“Not so eager to help you kill off my people, that’s all.”  
  
“Same as always, then.” His eyes twitch toward Azazel, and—no surprise there, in how his expression hardens when Erik notes Azazel’s amusement. “I can’t guarantee none of them will be harmed, Charles. They’re actively attacking my troops, and the methods they’re using make a clean fight almost impossible. Give me a way to neutralize them without bloodshed, and I’ll be happy to put it into practice.”  
  
“I told you I’d help try to prevent a war from happening; at no point did I promise I’d help you win a war if attempts to prevent one failed.”  
  
“It’s not different!” His voice rises in pitch, growing progressively more frustrated. “You wanted to save lives by stopping a war. Why is it so much worse to save lives by helping me end the war earlier?”  
  
Erik has always been a man of means and ends—namely, of ends. He’ll overlook an alarming number of atrocities in order to achieve his final result, and he’s not geared toward understanding why anyone would sacrifice a victory in order to hold to principles. The in between is only strategy to him—a way to make it to the final confrontation—rather than a series of moral events with significance all their own.  
  
“Because one was a call _not_ to use force; the other is an attack on my own people. And I _don’t_ support your cause.”  
  
But that may as well have been declared to the empty air, for the all the credence Erik gives it. “As if you’d ever allow us the luxury of forgetting that,” he snaps, already turning away.  
  
No. Not acceptable. He’s already been dismissed in more ways than he can count, and Erik will _not_ discard him further.  
  
Gods, he’s tired, worn down, but—the anger won’t stay away. If he could run and never look back, or—even sex would suit, rolling all that fury into something that would suck energy… but sex would require _Erik_. Brutally, ridiculously attractive Erik, who’s stunning in his military dress, and it’s impossible to decide whether it would be more satisfying to punch him or fuck him.  
  
Both. It’s not out of the question. Except the second—bloody _terrible_ idea.  
  
Lunging forward, he sinks his fingers into Erik’s arm and yanks him back around. “You _listen_ to me,” he snarls, briefly savoring the shock that blooms in Erik’s eyes, though the pleasure of seeing that is quickly subsumed by anger, “You don’t get to discard my opinion when I say something you don’t like, but take my help when it suits you. Bloody well _pick_ one, Erik, and stop playing at being both a loving husband and a dictatorial jailor. They don’t go together.”  
  
The fringe of Erik’s hair flops over his brow as he jerks his stare down to the grip on his arm. One second, two—and he yanks himself loose, batting away Charles’ arm and fixing steely eyes on Charles’ face. “We’ve had this conversation before; it doesn’t bear repeating.” Surprisingly, the dip and rise of his words is mostly even, under control. How unprecedented. “Either you give me your opinion, to which I would be more than happy to listen, or shut your mouth and follow orders. But don’t lecture me if you’re not planning on offering me a helpful alternative. Consider this pulling rank: I’ve seen you say similar things to your junior officers, so I’ll assume you understand the concept. If you need a refresher, we can discuss it later, in private.”  
  
This is anger, then: this pure, burning swell in his chest that whites out his vision and snatches away conscious thought. The world pulses, rushing up into him too quickly and then dropping out from under his feet, leaving him swaying on ground he’d thought certain had disappeared.  
  
“ _Fuck_ you.”  
  
Erik sighs. Worse, he finishes what he started earlier and turns away proper this time, directing his attention back to Azazel, who is doing his best to appear as though he hasn’t been listening to every word of their exchange. Serves him right, standing here doing nothing.  
  
But what _would_ Azazel do? It’s been like this for three hundred years. By law, Erik has done right: exposed a lying bearer, married him when it became obvious there was a bond, and is working to reestablish a more traditional relationship between them. No one would publically be willing to express any sympathy for this situation. In fact, by the standards of society, Erik is positively liberal, operating with astounding lenience.  
  
Considering it’s a society crafted by a genocidal maniac, that means less than nothing. And, Erik, wronged as he was by Shaw, still can’t see that. It’s bloody insanity, that.  
  
“Azazel, if you’d be so good as to suggest an officer who could lend his company to Charles for the time being, I’d be appreciative.”  
  
One does have to hand it to Azazel: he wears his neutrality remarkably well, hiding any thoughts he’s having behind a quick, efficient nod. “Frost would be pleased to see him again, I am sure.”  
  
Oh, bugger, Azazel can’t be serious. Surely he can’t be so blindly unaware of their history: more than a few of the servants must have heard the screams when Frost did Erik’s bidding the last time, and gossip like that eats up fuel worse than wildfire. One spark, and the whole household must have known. Give it some kindling and the army was probably briefed as well.  
  
For someone who commissioned Frost’s forced-memory retrieval in the first place, Erik isn’t acting overly favorable toward the idea of Frost: there’s a slight tick that sets off at the corner of Erik’s eye, and while it’s nothing more than a sharp twitch, blink-and-you-miss-it, it’s nevertheless a tell. Fantastic: Frost has done something to foster a grudge in Erik.  
  
Trust Azazel to capitalize on that. It would be exactly his style to serve up something unpalatable to Erik while wearing the face of consummate professionalism. Never a dull movement with Azazel and his penchant for stirring the pot. Reliable in war, yes, but not the sort of man in whose presence you’d want to pass out drunk. Gods only know what you’d wake up with on your face.  
  
“I’ve half a mind to order you back to Genosha to train the new recruits,” Erik mutters under his breath, but he waves in hand, assenting to Azazel’s choice. “Gods damn it, Azazel.”  
  
It’s an especially ineffective reprimand, and it leaves its intended target smiling. “You are not pleased to hear she wishes to bury old grudges with your husband, My Lord?”  
  
Only if pleased is code for “has swallowed something distasteful.” If Erik’s face pinches any further, he may collapse his features completely.  
  
Azazel shrugs unrepentantly. “Pity.” But, willing to joke or not, Azazel does know when to fall in line and follow commands, and only a blind man would fail to see that Erik’s patience has reached its limit: as tense as Erik is, he’s in danger of snapping a muscle.  
  
“You,” Azazel barks out in the general direction of one of the camp aids that always seem to be perpetually scrambling about underfoot. Though Azazel met them out the outskirts of the camp, just outside the entrance, there’s enough that needs doing just inside the perimeter to ensure that there’s always someone in shouting distance.  
  
“Sir,” the boy—can’t be older than his teens—calls out, snapping to attention as best he can while his feet keep on carrying him forward toward Azazel. He practically falls over himself in his haste to reach his officer. It’s a common type, both in Genosha and Westchester: hoping for approval, for the chance to be promoted to a status that actually sees action.  
  
Charles looks away. No more seeing, please. Another young face, another product of this conflict—it’s only boys who haven’t seen war who are this eager to get a piece of it. That, or accustomed soldiers who have grown so used to bloodshed that it’s all they know anymore. Neither group sees him _now_ , cracked through by this war and scanning the perimeter of the camp, paranoid down to the core and dreading the inevitable conflict that will come with being forced into the presence of such a distasteful acquaintance. If those young boys could understand _this_ , war might strike their fancy rather a lot less.  
  
“Tell Emma Frost that I wish to see her.”  
  
“Yes, Sir!” the boy squeaks out—this one is nowhere _near_ ready to see combat, for godsakes he still has acne—and scuttles away, darting through the entrance and in between the tents, the tufts of his dark hair fluttering messily with his movements. Pretty soon, he’s out of sight.  
  
Too bad: watching a young recruit is a damn sight better than dealing with Erik at the moment. “Not worried I’ll begin handing out sensitive information the instant I’m out of sight, Erik?”  
  
Erik blinks.“I’m well aware that you’d rather cut off your own arm than give Emma Frost anything remotely useful.”  
  
Now _that_ isn’t like Erik at all. Erik has made guarded into an art form. That’s a great heap of trust to place in something as flimsy as animosity.  
  
Azazel, for whatever reason, is far more amused by the prospect than he likely should be—or that the situation accounts for him being. “And so you see the reason for my choice!” he crows, pleased. Crossing his arms over his chest, he waits on—though he knows better than to actually expect to receive—Erik’s approval.  
  
Rather predictably, Erik only mutters something inaudible under his breath and digs the toe of his boot absentmindedly down into the dirt.  
  
“And if I start _asking_ questions?” This close to the entrance of the camp, if he were to start spouting off secrets here, it would be little better than a security hemorrhage. Though, if he does find his lips loosened, this will probably be the last time he’ll see the outside of the sleeping quarters for a good long while.  
  
Incarceration that complete isn’t quite worth it—not just yet. Though, if Erik keeps on as he is….  
  
Shrugging a shoulder, Erik peers off toward the camp, presumably attempting to catch sight of Frost’s approach. Bit early for that: the aid only just left. “Honestly, it would be no less than I’d expect from you.”  
  
“And I’d so hate to disappoint you.”  
  
“I’m sure.”  
  
“Pity the sentiment isn’t mutual.”  
  
Erik snaps his head back around to bowl him over with his stare, and, as loaded with irritation as it is, anyone less accustomed to it would probably quail under its intensity. “Pleasing you, I’m becoming increasingly aware, is completely outside the realm of current reality.”  
  
“A reality _you_ made.”  
  
Yes, reality. Sorry, Erik, such a pity it must be to find out now precisely how unworkable it is to force a marriage into a box of constructed truth. So many years, and Erik hasn’t cared enough about other people’s truths to be bothered with them. If he’d any sense, he’d have chosen another mate, some sweet-natured bearer, who’d be pleased to watch him settle into the seat of power in Genosha.  
  
If—but, _no_ , there’s no apologizing now for pushing back against Erik. Anyone who’d tasted freedom would do the same.  
  
Experience really is a kicker: letters in a long war, Emma Frost tearing up his mind, waking to stitches in his leg and Erik at his bedside; laughter, anger; and brilliant, blinding smiles from a friend, and from someone from whom he should have walked away.  
  
Gods almighty, but the mistakes—they burn, worse than looking at Erik right this moment, pushing on with this plan, and—  
  
What he wouldn’t do for a way out. Running is out of the question, but, if he _could_ ….  
  
In the space of the waiting, Erik’s eyes turn, instinctively seeking. Charles looks away, hovering his attention down toward his hands. They’re shaking, if only slightly. They’d been like this the first time he’d made a speech, when he’d been convinced stringing all those words together in front of people was the biggest obstacle he’d ever face.  
  
If only he’d known.  
  
Three hundred years ago, if someone had known, and if they’d stopped Shaw, life would have taken another path, and there may never have been bearers at all. Without the storms, and the high infertility in woman—who knows what might have happened. No bearers, no Shaw, no genocide for those who didn’t fall into line with Shaw’s prescribed methods of living. With a small tweak of history, Erik never would have been forced into those camps.  
  
Those camps. Those—Erik’s eyes are still on him, as one quick look back confirms, though returned eye contact eludes Charles. This tension seizes him up, and he can’t bring himself to show that to Erik. Erik, who learned to stare like that, and who learned to fight others for what he wanted, and to hold onto it viciously once he’d gotten it, lest someone take it away. The things Shaw must have done to him… but that’s one thing Erik _doesn’t_ owe: an explanation for that. Pain of that magnitude is personal, something to be explained at will, and never yanked out by force. So, he won’t ask, won’t batter Erik about it, though he’s always harbored a healthy amount of curiosity. Erik promised to answer any questions about his personal life, but the idea of asking is… painful.  
  
Tentatively—very tentatively—he reaches out down the bond, lining it with his own emotional feedback, and, with any luck, masking the fact that he’s searching. Erik may not be required to tell him of his time in those camps, but those events made him, and, suddenly—is it too much to ask, that he’d like to touch one of Erik’s thoughts? Surely that’s not such a strange request, bound together as they are.  
  
Maybe it shouldn’t be too much, but it always was before. Though, in some ways, it was never too much—Erik _never_ told him to keep his telepathy to himself, though there had been the implicit agreement that he limit himself to skimming surface thoughts. Once, that had been adequate, and he’d been able to pluck a thought from Erik’s mind at will and tumble it over in his own head, curling around it and concentrating on it until the world had felt stable. Erik’s thoughts, no matter what the situation, are unique, carved with a focus and a drive, and sinking into those thoughts is tantamount to leeching comfort and borrowing the feeling of stability, rather than genuinely cultivating it himself.  
  
Perhaps he _should_ talk to Frost. It would be worth the chance to match his experiences with those of another telepath. She might be able to tell him if it’s normal for telepaths to be partial to particular thought patterns, to find specific minds delightful. Is it possible that she’d be as drawn to Erik’s mind as he is? Perhaps there’s something specific about Erik’s mind that is appealing to telepaths in general, or perhaps it is only Charles’ preference….  
  
Just a touch, please, one thought. He’s missed this, missed Erik’s mind.  
  
Scuffing his foot across the dirt, he collects what he shaves off and nudges it into a pile, very similar to what he does with his thoughts, actually. Neat piles, little piles; compartments of thought and ordered memories. Always making something new, and hasn’t he been told that before? But that’s a telepath, more or less: there’s perpetually something further, something more to be understood and explored, and those things that are grounding are those things that are so familiar that they could never be understood. So often, those things are never recognized until they’ve _become_ the familiar—until there’s a bond, and a draw, and… what he wouldn’t give _right now_ to sink down into Erik’s mind and enjoy the quiet and the easiness of being in a gorgeous, familiar mind.  
  
“Erik.”  
  
Oh, gods, that shouldn’t have slipped out. This is weakness, nothing more; the moment will pass, and, once it has, he won’t need Erik’s thoughts so badly as he does right this minute. Giving in now is nothing more than a lack of self-control, and he’ll hate himself for it when he’s had a chance to _think._  
  
Is—this is the bond, isn’t it? It was always like this with Erik to some degree, but it’s worse now since the imprint. This need for _Erik_ ….  
  
Something in his tone must have changed, softening out or turning less abrasive, but it hadn’t been intentional, and he can’t regulate it when faced with whatever it is that’s settling in his gut, wrapped in a sensation that’s very reminiscent of unease.  
  
This wasn’t supposed to happen.  
  
“I don’t want to fight another war. Can’t you understand that?”  
  
Begging. Gods, he’s begging. _Please, Erik_ , but begging like a little child, like someone who’s been broken.  
  
He’s _not_ broken. He’s not. He can’t afford that luxury. And if begging is what it takes to save his people, he’ll give it a go. It’s worth it.  
  
There’s a sharp moment when he could swear Erik isn’t going to respond—is going to turn away and relegate him off to a minder for the rest of the day without another word—but it passes quickly, and he’s even less surprised than he would have originally thought he’d be when Erik’s shoulders relax back into a more reasonable posture, and he moves forward, closing the distance between them.  
  
Erik’s hands settle on his shoulders, thumbs notching into the curve of his collarbone and grounding him. Not hurting, not controlling, but holding him steady—and he _does_ badly need it.  
  
This is _Erik_. He’s—it’s so easy to be bitter toward him, and then, in the most unlikely situations, it’s even easier to long for when there hadn’t been bitterness at all.  
Once upon a time, it would have been the cause of a thrill to have Erik’s palms, large and warm, resting just over the seams of the uniform, high on the arms. One quick squeeze, and Erik could leave bruises, but, for the moment, he settles on the opposite end of that, cradling and reeling Charles in almost reverently, shortening the distance between them until it’s barely there at all. And, once, that would have been wish fulfillment, rather than torture.  
  
“Of course I understand that. And neither do I. I want this to be over. I want peace, where you and I can make this world a better place, and I can give you what I promised you: final appeal, control of food distribution, finance—most anything you want, when it comes to the practicality of ruling a kingdom. I _want_ that, for both of us. But I can’t do that until I’ve settled things here.”  
  
They’d played chess and talked about a better world almost every night. The kind of chess they play now has morphed into reality, and there’s nothing exhilarating about it anymore. Just draining. It’s—so hard to think, and the bond is thrumming, lit up by his attention to it moments before.  
  
Another bad decision, then, in a long line of them.  
  
“They’re terrified of what you’ll do to them,” he manages to choke out, half tossing the words between them. He’s too tired for an eloquent delivery—for anything but staring, raw and open, up at Erik, and saying what he needs to say. “Humans—they don’t want to live like second-class citizens, and until you can convince them you won’t do that to them, they’ll fight you.”  
  
Erik’s fingers flex, and he opens his mouth—not enough to part his lips completely, but sufficiently so that when he does get on toward speaking, there’s nearly no movement left to make. “We _are_ their betters, Charles. Endowed with gifts by the creator, remember?”  
  
“Creator _s_ , if you’re following what Shaw says. And you don’t believe the religion he made. I _know_ you don’t. You weren’t raised with it, and you play by its rules, but you don’t _believe_ it.”  
  
“Maybe not. But it’s what society has now, and, as you say, I’m willing to use it.”  
  
It doesn’t _matter_. It’s _wrong._  
  
 _So sure you know right from wrong,_ Erik had said to him once. _But do you really? Is it the same for everyone?_  
  
“Do you really believe in any sort of god at all? The one you were raised with, Shaw’s, anything?” Blurted out, like a child, and—it’s embarrassing, the strain that runs through his voice. Sounding so—so— _plaintive_. They’ve talked about this before, but the question lingers.  
  
Erik should know better than what he’s doing. Why doesn’t he?  
  
Surprisingly, the question is treated with the due consideration that it merits: Erik doesn’t answer immediately, and he doesn’t move, doesn’t give ground, but the life in his eyes pulses, reaching out to Charles’ own emotion effectively enough that it manifests as a tiny tug in his stomach. The unease is enough to set him to fidgeting, rolling his weight back and forth between his feet, and tolerating Erik’s hold for the steadiness that it continues to offer.  
  
He needs it, that steadiness. Gods, does he ever need it.  
  
When Erik finally does answer, he ducks his head, flickering his line of sight away from Charles’ before yanking it firmly back. “I don’t know, Charles. Honestly. But I _do_ believe that we’re the next phase of humanity. We’ve seen it time and again: the strongest survive. And we _are_ the strongest.”  
  
The strongest, yes, but not the best. The idea of being the better men has fallen by the wayside. “Mutants don’t always produce mutants.”  
  
“I’m not saying humans are to be annihilated—only that nature is clearly favoring mutants, and that I intend to do the same.”  
  
“And what if I bear you a human child? What then?”  
  
How curious, that Erik doesn’t appear to have been prepared to hear that.  
  
Erik blinks. And blinks again. The motion is too quick, a frantic flutter of lashes beating down against his cheek, but Erik gains back control quickly, and, though it almost seemed impossible seconds before, he moves in closer, so close that their breath mingles. “Then I would love our child regardless. But I wouldn’t place him—or her, I would love a little girl—in a position of power. I’d see to it that he made an advantageous match to a powerful mutant who would treat him with respect. But it wouldn’t change the fact that he was my child, and that I would love him.”  
  
The rolling in his stomach is very nearly enough to force him to back away. How could Erik—how could he—?  
  
No, no, no.  
  
“I loved my wife, Erik.”  
  
That will always be the wrong thing to say; it will always bring a storm into Erik’s eyes. “Charles—“  
  
Now is not the time, most definitely not the place, but—he swallows down a deep gulp of air, holding the burn in his lungs, and steps back, plucking Erik’s hands away, but not letting go. The opposite of what he should do? Perhaps, though the right option may somehow be wrong as well.  
  
“I need—will you listen to me?”  
  
“Tell me, then: don’t lecture.”  
  
Azazel is here, listening to _this_ —don’t think about that, don’t—and there’s no real reason that any of this boiled up now—but he’s been like that, increasingly, more and more, hasn’t he? Unpredictable. Moody. Wanting Erik, hating him, lost in memories and stymied by the present.  
  
But Erik’s _mind_ —that mind, that stunning mind, he can’t help but want that mind. And the man—Erik is a good man, sometimes, and it’s hidden there, in his mind.  
  
Erik fucked him on their wedding night; Erik once found him a book in the middle of a war zone because Charles had complained that he didn’t sleep properly if he didn’t get to read before bed. Those two actions come from the same man, and yet, and _yet_ ….  
  
“We—“ Deep breath. “We could go back to the palace, and—I’d let you.” Opening his legs for his people is nothing, considering how effective it could be, if he could sell it to Erik a bit better. And, gods, he can’t think with the bond kicked up into overdrive like this, stranding him in the midst of Erik’s control. But if he can use those urges for something good, to save his people, maybe it won’t be a complete loss… Channel it; don't lose himself in it. “Right now, I’d let you.”  
  
What was the way Erik had looked at him, when they’d been alone together, in those days when Shaw was still alive? What had gotten him hot? If he can just recall, then it can be used, twisted. Letting go of those memories, to use them for something so sordid, is wrong, feels wrong, dirty and low and soiling the best parts of himself, but it’s never that simple, is it?  
  
And so reminds the hand that comes to cradle his cheek, skating a thumb up over his cheekbone, and setting the skin to tingling. When he looks, Erik’s smile is muted, but it fits with the rest of him: he’s leaning in, dipping his head down and drawing in close, sighing almost unnoticeably, all with slow, measured movements, but patient, and tense.  
  
“You’re not thinking this through, Charles. I won’t stop trying to unite the land, not even for you, and a quick bout of sex won’t change that.”  
  
“I want—“  
  
“You don’t have the first clue what you want. That’s obvious, and I think if you take a look at how you’re acting, you’ll realize that too.”  
  
Looking is what he mostly avoids doing these days, thank you. What the hell is there left to see anyhow? “You know I hate Emma Frost.”  
  
Erik’s lips jump, pinching; he rubs his thumb over Charles’ cheekbone again. “And there you go again. Do you realize you’re doing it, changing subjects like that?”  
  
“Fair warning: I’ll—“  
  
Though, what exactly he’ll do doesn’t seem to matter. Erik cuts in before he can finish: “That’s half the reason I agreed to his—“ Erik glares over at Azazel, who is watching the interaction unabashedly, discarding even the pretense of offering them privacy, “mad plan to have her keep you company. Do what you like.”  
  
A fine way to treat one of his—officers? Generals? What the hell _is_ Emma Frost? “I assume she’s an asset to you: I can’t believe you’d really like to see me do her permanent harm.”  
  
Erik lips split wide into a toothy grin. He’s positively feral-looking when he smiles like that. “Trying to talk me out of giving you the opportunity?” That grin doesn’t fade, though it does lose a little of its light when the mood behind it sobers, and Erik slides his thumb into the pocket under Charles’ eye, not pressing, not hurting, but resting. “It _is_ your natural response, I’m beginning to realize, to pardon first. So: consider me fairly unworried that you’ll actually try what you threaten.”  
  
“Then why bother giving me the opportunity at all?”  
  
“Because it’s rightfully yours, if you want it. Take it or leave it as you please, but knowing you had the chance and made your decision one way or the other might, with any luck, give you some sort of closure. As the matter stands, I think it’s bothering you.” A quick tap with his thumb. “And so it bothers me too.”  
  
“The list of things that are currently bothering me, Erik, is nigh near infinite.”  
  
“Then striking one off can only help, hmm?”  
  
If insufferable had a flesh and blood definition, it would be embodied in Erik. Telling him that is worse than useless, but Charles is on the brink of trying anyway—and he probably would, if Azazel didn’t pick that moment to interrupt.  
  
“So sorry to stop a most… fruitful conversation,” Is that an allusion to sex? If this world has any mercy left, please, do not have let Azazel have made a reference to their sex life, “But Frost perhaps should not hear these thoughts, yes?”  
  
No, she absolutely should not, and, if it means bowing out of this conversation at its peak point, then he will do that, if that is what it takes to avoid discussing his feelings with Frost.  
  
To hell with closure: there’s no scenario in which this ends well. Already there’s the growing compulsion to pull away from Erik and put himself as far away from any display of vulnerability as possible. This woman has seen him held down, crying, has raided his mind and opened him up to lay him bare: any scrap of vulnerability that she sees from him in the future will be too much.  
  
There’s some comfort to be had in noting that she’s acting no happier to see him than he is to see her—a fact which Erik must absorb passably well, since he drops his touch and plants both his hands on Charles’ hips instead, checking any sort of sudden motion before it happens—but, potentially more importantly, also offering a steadying balance.  
  
This is… acceptable. Focusing outward, away from the bond—it helps.  
  
He can do this. Just concentrate on Frost.  
  
“Frost,” Erik greets, nodding in her direction.  
  
It’s at least a bit delightful to watch her salute Erik in return, grimacing so deeply that it’s a wonder her face doesn’t turn to diamond, as hard as that expression already is.  
  
There’s a story there: Frost isn’t in military dress, but she’s saluting Erik as if she were a full-fledged military member. Though, she’s not much for the way of “dress” in general: her trousers are fitted, and while they’re not quite as tight as she usually carries off, they hug her curves, all the way down to her calves, where they tuck neatly in a pair of—dare he say _delicate?_ —boots. How she found outdoor-oriented white boots with a good tread and hefty leather doesn’t hazard a guess. On the other hand, the jacket she’s wearing could have come from any trendy shop in Westchester: it’s tight, though thick against the cold—practicality a necessity here—and high-collared. Heaven forbid, however, that she’d button herself all the up a second before winter forces her to do so: the zipper is undone halfway down her front, displaying her frankly impressive bosom.  
  
Whether or not she has deplorable morals, it doesn’t hurt to appreciate the view she provides.  
  
Unless, of course, one’s husband is both present and homicidal. In which case, it’s an excellent way to trigger a display of possessiveness, where Erik’s fingers flex against his hips.  
  
“I was occupied, Lehnsherr,” she says by way of greeting, avoiding any glance at Charles with such care that it’s impossible to argue that she’s unaffected by his presence. Hard to blame her, when the last time they met, her mind was nearly turned to mush. Would have been, if not for Erik.  
  
Erik snorts. “With what? As effective as you’ve been so far, I’m disinclined to believe you’re doing anything more serious than painting your nails.”  
  
It’s a thing of beauty, watching Erik when he unleashes all his natural snark on someone like Frost.  
  
She does not agree, and if her scowl gets much deeper, with any luck she’ll strain a muscle in her face. “It’s not my fault we’re facing a people familiar with telepathy.”  
  
Let it never be said the people of Westchester aren’t resourceful. Most people these days have been taught low-level shielding techniques against telepaths, but, with their monarch being a telepath, there had been an unusually high desire in Westchester to understand how telepaths function—and that understanding is now being turned against people like Emma. If she wanted, she could break through individual people’s shielding, but why bother, when she can’t control them all at once? Any sign of individuals beginning to inexplicably walk out of the city to their death, and the people of Westchester will probably send someone out to assassinate her personally.  
  
She’s smart enough not to make herself the target of an entire region—not unless she has Erik’s full protection, and it’s glaringly obvious that, at the moment, she does not. If he thought it expedient, he would probably hand her over.  
  
“No. But it _is_ your fault that you can’t adapt to find ways around that.”  
  
“If it’s so simple, get your _husband_ to do it.”  
  
If she thinks _that_ is enough to provoke, she’s sadly mistaken. If that’s the worst he’s called today, then it’s been a good day. Five minutes listening in on the thoughts of the troops, and he’d doubtless overhear much worse.  
  
Could be that she’s simply aware that anything worse cannot be said in Erik’s range of hearing, unless she’s keen to find herself in increasingly unpleasant circumstances.  
  
Erik must be thinking similarly: he only laughs, giving Charles’ hips another squeeze. “Well, Charles?” he asks, brighter than the situation calls for. Clever, Erik, and, yes, all right, for the sake of baiting Frost…  
  
Grinning at Emma, he quips, “Sorry, Love, I’m a conscientious objector. Erik’s stuck with second best.”  
  
Against his back, Erik chest heaves, shoving down a laugh deep in his chest. Nothing quite like insulting a mutually despised person to bring out a little cooperation.  
  
“As he says, Frost.” Erik’s only barely keeping down that laugh, the muscles in abdomen tight against Charles’ back from the effort of holding it in. “And… I believe _you_ were the one who told me a month or so ago that you’d always known he wasn’t cut out for war. Interesting, that he’s still better at it than _you_.”  
  
How strange. And here he’d been fairly certain faces aren’t supposed to turn quite that shade of red. That’s the most color that’s been present on the Ice Queen in quite a while. Seems she has a heart after all, if only to keep the blood pumping through her veins.  
  
For the time being, concentrating on that is far more appealing than examining an insult like that—which he’d never heard directly, and which Erik has refrained from telling him. Probably for the best, in that last case.  
  
Not cut out for war? He’s _won_ wars.  
  
“Well, I suppose we can talk it over, Frost, since you’re apparently my escort for the day. Do try to follow my reasoning, though it may not be quite up to snuff, if we we’re to adopt the logic under which you’re operating, and assume that my intelligence has decreased severely since you discovered I have a womb. Such logic is, of course, impeccable.”  
  
This time, Erik can’t be bothered to hold back his bark of laughter. And Frost may well be ready to rip both their throats out. Azazel might be bothered to intervene, if only because he appears to so thoroughly be enjoying the show, and an impromptu tracheotomy would put a swift end to the spectacle. If he weren’t already red, he’d have turned so by now, as fervently as he’s working to hold back his laughter.  
  
Erik gives a pat to his side, and, though his grip is lingering and bears all the signs of regret at having to detach, he pushes Charles forward toward Emma. “Off you go then, Darling.”  
  
Dismissed like a child, yes, but—not really. Somehow, Erik has managed to make it a greater insult to Emma than to him. Not to mention, he’s been served up Emma Frost’s life on a silver platter, if he wants it. What Erik stopped that day in the palace, he’d allow to happen now, if that was what Charles wanted. He’d cut lose a valuable asset, merely to make way for a little peace of mind, if that’s what it takes.  
  
That’s bloody and brutal, oddly sweet, and very, very Erik.  
  
It’s also completely out of the question. Like hell he’s going to fry Emma Frost’s mind—not when he’s thinking straight, which no one would argue he was when he lashed out at her mind the first time.  
  
Not that _she_ needs to know he has no intention of harming her.  
  
Turning around in a huff—though she’s far too dignified to actually allow the sound of it to pass her lips—she begins to stalk off toward the camp, completely disregarding whether or not she’s actually being followed. A power play that unguarded? Honestly now, she’ll have to do better.  
  
He doesn’t move.  
  
By the time she notices, she’s several steps away, and the distance requires her to turn back around, and to raise her voice. “I don’t have all day, Sugar.”  
  
He arches an eyebrow. “Actually, from what I’ve heard, you _do_.”  
  
There’s no mistaking Erik’s choked-off laugh from behind him, and, if he _had_ missed it, the bond ripples with warm amusement, just to confirm. Disconcerting as ever, and hopefully that tendency to feel Erik’s emotions will regulate itself into something less abrasive, but—it’s somewhat pleasing, to feel the warmth of Erik’s approval, to know that, if only for the time being, they’re operating on the same line of thought.  
  
It’s been a while since that’s happened.  
  
Credit to Frost where credit is due: this time, she doesn’t take the bait, but chooses instead to seal her face over and regard him blankly, hands on her hips, and one hip jutting out a smidgen to the side. Too bad for her: all the casual judgment in the world won’t make her the better telepath, nor will it redeem quite what she’s lost here, in falling second to his wit as well.  
  
“Oh, if you _insist_.” One more put-upon sigh, and he does finally deign to follow her, if following can be taken to mean walking clear past her and taking off for the camp on his own, expecting _her_ to follow. If he were truly running off, Erik would chase him down himself, but the fact that there’s no sign of that from behind him is an even better indication that he’s made his point in all possible ways.  
  
Little victories, then. For now, he will take what he can get.


	26. Chapter 26

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the slight delay. Blame life. On the bright side: Ororo! Plus, answers to some things that, until now, might have been a little fuzzy (aka Emma Frost). Though, I imagine this chapter will also create a bunch of new questions. If you feel I'm not tying things up properly, or if I'm leaving unanswered questions, let me know. Some of it might be things I intend to answer in later chapters, but other things I may have simply missed, and it's always a great help to me when people point out what doesn't make sense: it lets me gage whether or not I've answered things adequately in later chapters.

Spending time with Emma Frost is, not surprisingly, disagreeable. Her dislike is so thick that it’s nearly tangible, and, as cold as she usually is, she’s lowered the temperature even further to something damn near freezing. The next ice age, possibly. One would almost think _he_ was the one who riffled through _her_ mind.  
  
“You know,” he says blandly as they make their way among the tents, ignoring the blatant stares and whispers, “this outing may not have been intended to be particularly _fun_ , but I’ll thank you not to act as though you’ve been unfairly sentenced to cruel and unusual punishment.”  
  
She tosses a withering look in his direction. “Sugar, you ought to know by now, Lehnsherr has never bothered with a fair sentencing in his life. I don’t expect him to play by the rules when it comes to you: just because _he_ was the one who ordered that little trip through your mind doesn’t mean he’s stable enough to recognize that means I am not responsible for your hysterics.”  
  
Is that what they’re calling it these days when someone reacts to having his mind ripped open? How charmingly euphemistic. She isn’t wrong, though: Erik deserves every bit as much blame as Frost. With Erik, though, there was a purity of belief, a conviction that he doing what was right. As twisted as that is, it was authentic. Frost operated as a mercenary, pure and simple, and, as a telepath, she knows what it means to rip through a mind. Erik is not excused in his ignorance, but he can’t understand the sheer horror of what he ordered.  
  
Frost, though—she would understand _exactly_ what she did.  
  
“You have it a bit backwards.” Though, not as backwards as many of the men in this camp, who are thinking _very_ hard about how he looks naked. Two telepaths, and they still can’t figure out the risks of being overheard? Good gods. If Erik sees this in his memory—there’s a very large contingent of soldiers who will be deployed to the Upper North in the dead of winter. “Erik recognizes plenty enough that he’s responsible. He’s only hoping _I_ don’t recognize that, and that I’ll blame _you_ instead.”  
  
Her step falters, and, while she doesn’t stop, she blinks slowly, almost owlishly, though that fades when her eyes narrow and she tips her head back, regarding him down the bridge of her nose. “I wouldn’t think you’d defend him.”  
  
“And _I_ wouldn’t think you’d mistake a defense for the truth: I didn’t say he wasn’t guilty, but merely that he knows that he is. Just because he’s convinced that what he did was right doesn’t mean that he isn’t aware of what he’s done.”  
  
“I’m not sure he _does_ know what he’s done.”  
  
“For someone who helped him—who _is_ helping him—I’m surprised you care.”  
  
She scoffs. “I worked for Shaw, Honey: in comparison, Lehnsherr is well-adjusted and stable. I can live with his brand of crazy, because I know exactly what to expect from him. I _know_ whom I’m in bed with, Xavier. The question is, do _you_?”  
  
“A damn sight better than _you_ do, I’d wager.”  
  
In just about every way, when it comes right down to it. She might know what Erik believes, but she’ll never know why he believes it, what pushed him to that point, or how he’s perfected the art of unwaveringly living out his convictions while simultaneously disliking some of their consequences. Case in point: he has every right to a bearer of his choice, while expressing unease over the mental turmoil his actions caused to the bearer in question.  
  
It doesn’t mean much, when Erik is forcing him into a life he doesn’t want, but there’s at least something to be said for the fact that Erik isn’t totally blind to the turmoil that he created.  
  
Not _totally._  
  
Snorting lightly, Frost gestures toward an especially large tent toward the edge of the encampment. Leave it to Emma Frost to institute luxury in the midst of a battlefield. It wouldn’t be surprising to find that she’s hooked up running water and derived some way to have her meals on time and hot—which is all but an impossibility in a military camp. The number of times he and Erik ended up going to fetch the food themselves is so high that it long ago ceased to matter.  
  
Toward the end, it _truly_ ceased to matter, since Erik took to fetching for the both of them. That insatiable need to provide care, bursting through. If he’d only recognized Erik’s courting behavior earlier, then—  
  
What? He would have stopped it? No. He wanted Erik. He wanted the attention. There’s no point in lying to himself about something so basic. He wanted Erik, and he let himself indulge in thinking about it, and now he’s here, paying for it.  
  
Simple as that.  
  
Not really very simple at all.  
  
“I don’t _want_ to know him in the ways you do, Xavier. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but the bond makes you crazy when you let yourself get caught in it. The moment you start sinking down into its pull, you start making horrible decisions—and learning to manage that is a real bitch.”  
  
There’s no denying that he walked right into that one. Tossing the tent flap aside, he stalks through the door, cutting out the bite of her words as effectively as possible—which isn’t very, when her laugh, sharp like the tinkling of broken glass, follows after him as she slips inside behind him. Worse, the truth in her words chases too. Lost in the bond? Yes. Earlier, case in point: when he was talking with Erik and Azazel, he’d gone a bit fuzzy. It’s when he starts thinking too closely and works himself into it. All right, fine. If he knows what causes it, he can steer clear of it.  
  
Right?  
  
It will _have_ to be right.  
  
“You—“ But whatever he’s about to say gets cut off. There’s a woman in the tent, seated on a cot on the far side of the space, and while that in and of itself wouldn’t be cause for shock, her gaze is too steady for her to be surprised at his arrival. That’s not the normal reaction of someone who’s been startled by a new arrival, or who doesn’t know who her guest is.  
  
If he had to guess, he’d say she’s been waiting for him.  
  
“Ororo Monroe,” Frost explains casually, gesturing in the woman’s direction before taking a seat of her own at the makeshift desk that she’s set up.  
  
As he’d expected, Frost’s tent is needlessly done up, with several pieces of furniture and a white comforter on the cot. Leave it to Frost to lend a canvas tent an air of class. She has several chairs, in addition to the fold-out desk, but only the one cot. So, not a shared tent: the other woman must be a guest.  
  
From the looks of the woman, she’s an actual soldier, dressed as she is in the standard-issue uniform of Erik’s army. Not an officer, but a fully-fledged soldier—not one of the greenies who act as message carriers, like the pimpled youth from earlier. She doesn’t appear young enough for that anyway, though she’s not much aged, either: perhaps in her early thirties if he had to guess.  
  
She’s beautiful too, with skin the color of coffee with milk added in, and with large dark eyes that grip onto his senses and pull him in close, sapping his attention away from anything else in the room, her other features included. That’s quite a feat, when her hair is pure white—though, it suits her, doesn’t age her at all, and it falls around her face in a frame that’s soft enough to roll with the sweet roundness of her facial shape.  
  
“Ms. Monroe,” he greets, nodding in her direction. “I don’t believe we’ve had the pleasure of previous acquaintance.”  
  
No reason they should have, as there are a large number of soldiers in Erik’s army that weren’t currently serving when they were hunting Shaw. But… if Frost is introducing them, there’s a nagging sense that he _ought_ to know her.  
  
Her mouth curls back in a wry smile. “My lord.”  
  
He waves her off. “No need for that.” No need for Frost to offer him a seat either, apparently—though she may simply be enjoying the chance to make him uncomfortable.  
  
Frost herself has no compunctions about taking full advantage of _her_ seat, though, crossing her legs primly and sitting ram-rod straight: an excellent vantage point to watch him stand in the middle of the tent.  
  
To hell with that: uninvited or not, he reaches out and claims one of the chairs on the edge of the room, setting himself down and leaning forward, propping his elbows on his knees and returning Monroe’s stare with an unwavering one of his own.  
  
“ _Have_ we met?”  
  
Her lips twitch. “Don’t you think you’d remember me if we had?”  
  
“Then forgive me, but I can’t understand why you’re observing me with quite such a high degree of scrutiny.”  
  
Because that’s exactly what it is.  
  
Frost clucks her tongue disapprovingly. “And to think, Lehnsherr is enamored with your telepathic skills. You don’t even use them. Pathetic.”  
  
Yes, respecting boundaries and refusing to take advantage is clearly the most despicable of actions. “I prefer conversation,” he answers, sedate. “Though, if you rely so heavily on your telepathy in all interactions, that would explain your… unique set of social skills. Really, Frost, I would have thought you’d realized by now, you’re not supposed to take your clothes off for _every_ person you meet.”  
  
If she’s offended, she doesn’t show it, and though she does cluck her tongue with a hint of irritation, it’s no more care than she’d give to a conversation about unfavorable weather. “Not all of us can be so blessed as to narrow our clientele down to one.”  
  
Ah, he’s just been called a whore. Hm. How… underwhelming. It certainly happens often enough these days. “Yes, may you be so blessed one day,” he returns dryly. She won’t be, of course: she isn’t a bearer. But what a fantasy it makes, imagining Frost having to navigate the world of being someone’s bearer. “Ms. Monroe, if you’d be so good as to tell me what interest you have with me?”  
  
Surprising, how Monroe’s face splits into a grin, revealing a row of straight white teeth. It’s a nice smile, friendly and engaging. “Call me Ororo. And I simply wanted to meet you. You’re rather infamous these days.”  
  
He nods. All this conversation needs now is a cup of tea. How perfectly pleasant. Infamous, famous, it’s all the same. “Ororo, then. If you don’t mind me asking, what’s your rank?”  
  
“Just a soldier.”  
  
That isn’t an adequate answer at all. “New?”  
  
“Fairly. I’m from Genosha. I joined up after you and Lehnsherr deposed Shaw.”  
  
These days, most people tend to give credit solely to Erik—more so now that they know that doing otherwise means giving military credit to a bearer. Whether or not a person believes that’s acceptable is not the point: they won’t say it in earshot of anyone with any degree of clout. “Eager to see the regions united?”  
  
She shrugs. “Oh, I wouldn’t say that. But staying in Genosha was… not an option, and this was the best way to get a free trip out of the capital.”  
  
The chair—a simple canvas fold-up—is far from comfortable, but his sudden urge to fidget doesn’t derive from that. Whoever this woman is, there’s something notable in her manner, and—there’s the definite feeling that she knows more than she’s telling. Or that she wants something specific from him. It could be either. Or possibly something else.  
  
Reading her mind would clear up the confusion… but, reading her mind would also give Erik direct access to whatever else she’s thinking if, for whatever reason, Erik ever wanted to look.  
  
It’s deeply disconcerting, to know that Erik can take a run through his memories any time he’d like. Admittedly, Erik is not wrong when he says that Charles has done that to others for years, but—this is Erik, and Erik’s motives are far, far beyond simple curiosity. War criminals, enemy soldiers—yes, he’d used his telepathy against them, but never against friends, against—he’d never used it against _Erik_.  
  
It’s not the same. It _isn’t._  
  
“Most people would think the capital is the place to be these days,” he answers slowly, testing out the words on his tongue. “It’s where everything is happening.”  
  
Drawing her shoulders in slightly, she leans back, mirroring Frost in her posture and in how she crosses her legs, watching Charles emotionlessly. “I think I’ve had enough of that.”  
  
“Oh?”  
  
But she just shrugs. “I’m working as Frost’s assistant, and I asked if I could meet you. I admit, I was curious.”  
  
The way things are going, life as a borderline circus attraction is becoming more and more of a possibility by the hour. The troops are fascinated with him—they never thought of him naked _before_ , but, suddenly, he’s a _thing_ to be imagined in bed—his own citizens can’t decide whether they pity him, resent him, or admire him; and almost everyone he encounters is interested in him, in this anomaly that hid who he was for so long, and who has now been caught out and thrust into the spotlight as the husband of the King of Genosha.  
  
And to think he’s clawed his way into surviving for the past few weeks. That’s nothing short of a miracle.  
  
“I’m afraid there’s not much unique about me,” he answers tightly, only catching his grimace and forcing it back down seconds before it twists out onto his face. The bitterness that prompted it lingers, though, and seeps into his words.  
  
This time, it’s Frost who snorts, rolling her eyes for good measure. “That’s certainly not true, Xavier.”  
  
This is ridiculous. If they wanted to ambush him, they’ve done a find job, and they might as well crack on at this point, and get to the heart of whatever they’re after—because there’s no chance that it’s simple conversation. Nothing is ever that simple with Emma Frost, and Ororo Monroe is… more than she’s telling. It doesn’t matter that he hasn’t met her before now: this wasn’t a chance meeting, set up at the last moment—or not completely. Frost couldn’t have known Erik intended to set her to guard duty for today—  
  
“No. But I _could_ influence Azazel into orchestrating a situation that would allow him to suggest that I act as your escort.”  
  
Bloody buggering hell. He didn’t—she couldn’t—  
  
Frost smirks and leans forward, propping her elbow on her knee and cupping her chin in her hand, almost bored in how she watches him, lazy and half-lidded. But that’s a lie too—the light in her eyes is a little too bright, and, smirk or not, there’s real pleasure to the curve of her mouth.  
  
He slams his shield up so hard that the force of it ricochets through his head—and, oh, that isn’t pleasant, not at _all._  
  
“Relax, Sugar. I wasn’t in your head. But… you _were_ thinking terribly loudly. A bit rude, wouldn’t you say?”  
  
Keeping Erik out of his thoughts—the bond makes it so easy to leak into each other—takes a good deal of effort, and it would be logical that he’d have to compensate with shielding somewhere else. Surely that’s not a problem normally? No, it doesn’t feel like it—a quick prod at his shields is enough to reassure on that count—but a telepath like Emma Frost could pick up on anything he let slip past… especially if she were lurking at the edges of his consciousness, expecting something like that, and waiting for it to come.  
  
Who the hell taught her how to do that?!  
  
“Why would you want to talk to me so badly that you’d do that? I’m sure you recall that our last meeting was firmly in realm of great unpleasantness.”  
  
She shrugs, eyes darting over toward Monroe, but quickly reaffixing on him seconds later. “You’re quite the trip when you’re like this, you know.” But she can’t be too offended, or, if she is, she deals with the trauma by straightening up and giving her nails a thorough examination. She must not like what she finds: she frowns, pursing her lips, and then turns her attention back to him. “What do you remember about the day that you and Lehnsherr took Genosha?”  
  
A whole lot of a mess that he’d rather not recall in any great detail, thank you. “I can’t imagine why you think I’d tell you anything about that.”  
  
Another glance at Monroe, and this time, they hold eye contact for longer—enough time for Monroe to offer a curt, if tiny, nod. Frost just sighs. “Sugar,” she drawls, rolling her eyes and, apparently tired of sitting, unfurling herself back onto her feet with an enviable degree of fluidity. One can say what one likes about Emma Frost, but, no matter the situation, she does have poise. “You’ve already told me exactly what went on when you took the capital. You just don’t remember it.” One hand settles on her hip, as she regards him with—is that pity? “And by that I mean: you don’t remember telling me about it, and you definitely don’t recall all of what happened that day.”  
  
The chair underneath him may as well be pure steel all of a sudden, for all the comfort he can pull out of it. Not again. This cannot happen again. Hidden memories, things that Frost knows—this is not a game that ought to be played, and, if it were, Frost would be the last person who would be a viable companion.  
  
She’s scrambled his mind once before: _never again._  
  
“And I suppose you’re going to tell me next that I confided in _you_ , and that you’ll help me regain those memories, if only I’ll let you in to do it?”  
  
Her mouth twists up in a sneer. “Don’t be ridiculous, Xavier. We don’t particularly like each other—which, I’m pleased to say, is not something that changes based on what you do or don’t know at any given time. And may I just say: in the past year, that has varied _far_ too much for my tastes.”  
  
“And gods forbid we’d offend _those_.”  
  
The looks she levels him with makes it all too clear that, actually, he’s not so far off the mark in terms of how she’d like the world to run. Offend Emma Frost at your own peril.  
  
“I’m not your friend, Xavier. Monroe is. And believe you me: you’re lucky I owe her a favor. Luckier still that we have common enemies.”  
  
If there were any justice in the world, those claims could be dismissed out of hand, but… there’s a draw to them. Not hard to figure out what: the allure of hope, of something hidden that might save him, might pull him out of this situation. That’s hardly reason to toss out realism, though: Frost will know as well as he himself does how much he would like a way out of this mess.  
  
Believing anything she says would be the height of folly.  
  
“Charles.” It’s Monroe this time, and—  
  
This is exhausting. All of a sudden, his heart is pounding up in his chest, working hard to pump life down into his limbs. It isn’t succeeding: there’s a strain of weakness burrowing through his legs. If he weren’t sitting, he’d have to find a chair: the sensation is too all-encompassing. His hands, too, begin to sweat, and he shoves them down against his thighs, wiping them viciously.  
  
 _Coward_ his mind taunts. To ignore any chance, based on the possibility of fail—  
  
“Oh, _honestly._ ”  
  
Frost’s feet march into view—at some point, he’s dropped his head down into his hand, kneading at his temples—and, yes, looking up at her is necessary, since who knows what she’ll plan otherwise, but—  
  
No need to do it himself: she latches her hands onto his cheeks, the tips of those perfect nails, of such concern to her a minute or so ago, digging down into the flesh above his jaw line, and yanking his head up.  
  
“What—?” But the question is cut off midway.  
  
Oh—she’s— _oh—_  
  
“Zero Seven, Zero Six, Seventeen Zero Three.”  
  
It’s like being hit with a bat, this business of welcoming back a memory into his brain—if a bat could hit him from the inside of his skull. And that’s what it is: a memory of his, locked, but triggered by that code—Erik’s birth day and month, followed by his own—that Frost has just thrown out at him.  
  
Too much, too much. All of it, and it bears down, presses, igniting the inside of his head.  
  
And then the pressure vanishes.  
  
“Erik will have felt that,” he gasps out. The first thing that comes to mind, and it’s of Erik. How far he’s fallen. And—  
  
This wasn’t the sort of thing that should have been buried. Unfortunately, it’s precisely something that _had_ to be.  
  
All those seconds, dropping back into place and sprinkling through his brain, reaffixing themselves into the place they’d vacated when they’d been hidden. And with their return, there comes the reason that they’d been taken in the first place—  
  
 _/Shaw isn’t here._  
  
 _That much has become undeniable in the short time that they’ve been in the palace. He’d been there when they’d been at the gates, damn it—he’d been visible in the courtyard—but he’s gone now, gods only know where. The palace is surrounded and the streets are in chaos, but Shaw must have had an escape route somewhere that wasn’t listed in the building plans._  
  
 _For a building that’s just been taken by siege, the palace is in remarkably good condition. Granted, the corner of the west side is a bit… collapsed at the moment, but that’s what happens when you tunnel down underneath it and substitute metal structures for the corner foundations. Evacuate everyone out of the tunnel and then let Erik give that metal a quick_ yank….  
  
 _There’s now a giant gaping entrance in the side of the palace. A little too covered in rubble and debris for Charles’ tastes, but war does call for sacrifices, and one can’t roll the red carpet out for everything, unfortunately._  
  
 _If Erik were here, he’d laugh and call the sarcasm for what it is—but Erik_ isn’t _here, and what a miracle_ that _is. Giving Erik the slip is never easy at the best of times, and it’s damn near impossible in the middle of an invasion. It was necessary, though: Erik is needed at the front of the palace where there are still pockets of the guards holding out. Bringing him along in a fruitless search for Shaw’s escape route would have been a waste._  
  
 _Pity that logic won’t make Erik any more amenable to overlooking the fact that Charles has taken off without providing information on an intended location._  
  
 _Speaking of Erik: he’s showing an admirable degree of persistence, hammering away with mental missives, rather than physically searching._ [Where _are_ you?]  
  
 _It’s really only fair to answer him. [_ I’m fine. Just trying to find the escape route.]  
  
[Are you _insane?!_ You could find _Shaw_ in the process.]  
  
[I’d call you. I wouldn’t engage him alone.]  
  
[You might not have the option—]  
  
 _That’s enough of that, then. Erik knows he’s safe, knows he’ll inform him if he doesn’t intend to stay that way._ [Moot point, Erik. He’s gone. You finish up with the guards, and I’ll see if I can find where he left from.]  
  
[Charles—!]  
  
[Talk to you soon!]  
  
 _Cutting off the link, he ducks down another hallway, scanning for any mental signatures. A terrified maid, hiding in one of the rooms, another in the supply closet, and—there. Back in one of the rooms. The thoughts—they’re something different._  
  
 _Whoever is in the room at the end of the hall, his or her mind is a mixture of calculation and determination, laced with violence and a deep-seated suffering. But the mind itself isn’t… cruel. It’s tired, and it’s poised on a knife’s edge of tension, but there’s a softness to it too._  
  
 _He ought to call Erik. It isn’t Shaw in the room beyond, but that doesn’t mean that whoever it is isn’t dangerous. But calling Erik would mean waiting, and, more than that, this mind—it’s not the sort of mind that Erik would handle well. Erik can be soothing—amazingly so, actually—but not to strangers. Showing that emotion to a stranger would expose too much of himself and create too great a vulnerability for him to stomach without some sort of compensation. He’ll offer that comfort to a friend, but not to a stranger._  
  
 _And Erik’s default coldness is not what’s needed at the moment._  
  
 _Creeping forward, he settles his hand on the door and tries the handle. Locked. And… from the_ outside. _Whoever is in the room beyond has been locked_ in _, rather than trying to lock the world_ out.  
  
 _Erik would be quite a help for_ this _, at least._  
  
 _Pity, too, that the door is of the heavy wooden variety. But all locked doors, even ones as heavy as this, have keys. If the person is locked in the room beyond, then someone must logically be able to enter in order to provide food._  
  
 _Who provides food? The servants._  
  
 _Rather like the one hiding in the supply closet._  
  
 _And, yes, a quick check through the girl’s mind turns up the necessary information: she’s tasked with delivering meals to—_  
  
 _Bloody hell._  
  
 _To_ Shaw’s bearer _._  
  
 _Right, then. One easy suggestion in the girl’s mind has her strolling out of the supply closet and down the hall toward him. One more and she’s found the correct key and handed it to him, all the while blank-eyed and calmer than she was previously. Loads calmer, actually: poor girl is terrified, and he takes a moment to siphon away her current state of panic. [_ Be calm. Stay hidden. You’ll be all right.]  
  
 _The supply closet remains her safest option, strangely enough. His and Erik’s soldiers have standing orders not to harm the staff, and if she’s off in that little supply room, she won’t have to risk being hit by any crossfire. So… send her back in there, and, yes, there she goes, tucked back away safely._  
  
 _Good. Now on to… gods only know what. If Shaw’s consort is indeed in that room beyond…_  
  
 _Slipping the key into the lock, he gives it one good turn and presses his hand to the door, waiting. There’s no noise from inside—no recognition that anyone has heard the key in the lock. Except—there’s a spike of awareness in that mind, but other than that there’s no significant change. The sensation of waiting remains._  
  
 _All right, she knows he’s there. Settle her down into a brief state of unconsciousness? No. It doesn’t seem fair. If this is Shaw’s consort, she’s had her choice stripped from her in every way possible. Besides, her mind hadn’t shifted to sudden thoughts of murder at the sound of the door turning. There’s no indication that he needs to be any more invasive toward her than he’s already been. After everything she’s been through…._  
  
 _Decision made, he turns the handle and pushes the door open._  
  
 _Pity or not, regard for her situation hasn’t turned him careless—and, as it turns out, it’s a good job that’s true. It’s that state of vigilance that enables him to dodge the oncoming book that’s aimed for his head._  
  
 _If that’s the best weapon she can obtain… Shaw has stripped her helpless. It’s impossible to forget that, even as he pivots sideways, watching the hardcover smash into the door._  
  
 _It falls from her hands immediately after._  
  
 _“Who are you?” she demands._  
  
 _Shaw’s consort, the woman who held back the storms: it’s stunning to think that they’re both the same as this woman here, who’s half bent over from the follow-through from her swing, and who’s watching him as best she can when half of her shoulder-length white hair has flopped down over her face._  
  
 _“Charles Xavier.” Raising his hands, he slowly drags back a step until he can press against the wall. Just in case._  
  
 _She straightens up, pushing her hair out of her face. The messiness is incongruous with the rest of her appearance: she’s clothed in a dress of deep blue that hugs her curves and dips low across her chest, revealing a rather impressive amount of cleavage. It doesn’t look particularly comfortable, but that was probably never Shaw’s priority._  
  
 _“Who the hell are you?” she asks, drawing back as well. Her eyes flicker toward the open door, but darting through it would require turning her back to him, and her hesitancy indicates she isn’t yet inclined to risk that._  
  
 _“The man who laid the plans to drive Shaw out of his own city.”_  
  
 _No love for Shaw, apparently—although the feel of her mind didn’t indicate there would be. This confirms it, though: she draws in a deep breath and nods, losing enough of her tight control to allow the right corner of his lip to twist in a suggestion of satisfaction. “You’re here. Does that mean you’ve succeeded?”_  
  
 _“He’s fled the building, yes, and quite probably the capital as well.”_  
  
 _This time, her smile is full, though the element of anger that hangs along with it robs the expression of its beauty. That’s too bad: the contours of her face very much suggest that she’d have a beautiful smile if she were allowed to display it fully._  
  
 _“Should I assume that means I am now_ your _prisoner?” she asks, only half bitterly._  
  
 _What? Prisoner? That was never the point of this venture. Her mind is practically screaming that she has no emotional attachment to Shaw: if she isn’t a willing accomplice, there’s no reason to abridge her freedom—there are several reasons to do the exact opposite._  
  
 _“Should you be?” he asks, trying to keep the dumb-founded question in his voice to a minimum._  
  
 _He’s in good company: her movements jerk and halt, and she opens her mouth to reply, but pure surprise works to close it—and she can’t keep the traces of that off her face. “I’ve been here for three hundred years. How do you know I haven’t adopted Shaw’s views?”_  
  
 _She’ll probably feel better if he gives her access to the door, and, if she does make a break for it, he can always stop her. The perks of being a telepath. Letting her have the option in the first place might go a long way toward making friends, though._  
  
 _Raising his hands to shoulder-height, he turns them palm-toward her and steps to the side. “In my experience, people who are loyal don’t need to be kept behind locked doors. Besides that, I’m a telepath. I’m not reading your thoughts unnecessarily, but I can feel that you aren’t… a fan of his, exactly.”_  
  
 _Most people, when told they’re faced with a telepath, typically recoil and demand he stays out of her head. Shaw’s consort, however, continues to be a surprise, choosing instead to merely nod and cross her arms, studying him with, dare he say it? More respect than before. Interesting._  
  
 _“Ororo Monroe,” she says, uncrossing her arms and holding out a hand to shake._  
  
 _He grips it firmly and gives her a nod. “As I said, Charles Xavier. And, as I also said, this was an attempt to take down Shaw. You’re welcome to join myself and my colleague, of course, in pursuing him, but after three hundred years I wouldn’t blame you if you’d had enough. I won’t lie: you’d be an asset to us, but you’re free to go if that’s what you wish.”_  
  
 _Letting his hand go, she tucks her arms back into a folded position and raises an eyebrow. “And does your colleague feel the same?”_  
  
 _Ah. Good point. Erik is… far more single-minded. It’s not that he doesn’t want justice to be done, but he might not be quite so eager to let someone this valuable walk away. Running on revenge as he does, he might not necessarily understand someone who would rather let that go for the time being in favor of breaking completely away from what she’s been subjected to through the years._  
  
 _Would Erik try to force this woman into helping? It would be nice to be able to definitively say no, and that’s probably the correct answer, but there’s an outside possibility…._  
  
 _“If you’re going to leave, do it now,” he says finally. “Erik is a good man and a good leader, but… he’s very driven. He’ll do just about anything to take Shaw down. If you’re going to leave, it would be better for you to do it before you meet him.”_  
  
 _She nods and—it’s possibly an instinctual reaction, how she edges closer to the door. “I’d like to help you,” she admits. “But I need to find someone, and I think it might be better for her if we left rather than following you. She’s seen enough of Shaw to last forever, and I’m not certain that she could fight against him. The bond does strange things.”_  
  
 _Wait… “But aren’t_ you _…?”_  
  
 _She smiles wryly. “I’m not his mate. But it suits him to pretend to the world that I am. In those first years, I was quite convenient to have on his arm. Controlling the weather—it’s a helpful talent for someone who needs to clear away the pollution he caused. But, these days, with the restrictions on bearers, I’m afraid that locked doors are more his style.” She snorts self-deprecatingly in the general direction of the door._  
  
 _Restrictions on bearers: if she hadn’t already garnered his help, the deflation of air in his chest guarantees she now would have. “I understand.” Doesn’t he ever. More than is good, or healthy. This could be him, locked in a sumptuous and confining room, and if she’s been pressed into this for years already—he won’t aid in pressing her into anything else. “I won’t tell anyone I met you. I’ll let them all assume that you escaped the palace in the chaos. But you should go now before anyone comes along. Is there anything you can wear that might be less…?”_  
  
 _She sweeps her hand down the front of her dress. “Obvious? I’ll have to hunt in some of the other rooms. Shaw was disgustingly fond of leaving me with only options that_ he _found appealing.”_  
  
 _Just when it seems Shaw can’t be any more deplorable… “Here.” Popping the buttons on his jacket, he shrugs it down off his arms and into his hands. It’s a standard military uniform: no obvious signal of rank. Given the conglomeration of units that are fighting beneath him and Erik, there’s been no chance to coordinate their uniforms, and in an invasion like this, it seemed more important to have a good, sturdy uniform than one that reflects his actual rank. His soldiers know who he is, but this has the added benefit of preventing anyone who’s not familiar with his face from recognizing him quite so easily. “Grab a pair of trousers. Even if they’re not particularly suited for war, the jacket ought to be enough to draw attention away from it.”_  
  
 _She doesn’t hesitate: snatching the jacket out of his hand, she hurries over to a large wardrobe at the corner of the room and yanks it open. “Thank you,” she calls over her shoulder, though she’s already rummaging through the clothing. “I—really, thank you.”_  
  
 _“You’re welcome. Best of luck. Hopefully I won’t see you again, at least for a while.”_  
  
 _Having unearthed what she’s looking for from amongst the veritable mass of clothing, she turns back toward him, trousers and blouse in one hand, his jacket in the other. “I owe you a debt.” Her small, almost… peaceful smile—it doesn’t indicate that’s a bad thing. After so long with Shaw, it’s astounding that her eyes can still soften this way, regarding him with gentle good nature. “I hope I’ll eventually have the chance to repay it.”_  
  
 _“Regardless, I’m happy to have helped. And… whatever you’re looking for, I hope you find it.” Happiness, peace, the person she seeks—all of it. She deserves all good things after what she’s been through._  
  
 _For now, though, it isn’t up to him to help her with that. He’s done the best he can, and he needs to get back, lest Erik finally reach the end of his rope and come looking for him. That would do no one—neither himself nor Ororo—any favors._  
  
 _“Until later, Miss Monroe.”_  
  
 _She nods her head in acknowledgement. “Ororo, please. And the same to you. Thank you.”_  
  
 _He offers her one last smile before ducking out the door and back into the hallway./_  
  
And now: _here._ Today.  
  
“Nice to see you again, Ororo,” he murmurs, forcing his lips into some semblance of obedience; swiveling his head in her direction, he half-grimaces out a smile. There’s a slight twinge of concern from Erik on the other side of the bond, but it abates quickly, presumably once Erik is satisfied that Charles isn’t in danger. Considering Frost’s proximity, Erik likely just assumes they’re having an unpleasant conversation. “Truly, it is.”  
  
After all this time, it’s a hard-won luxury, not to have to tell a lie.  
  
Ororo Monroe. _Ororo Monroe._  
  
It would seem the girl who held back the storms hasn’t been missing at all.  
  
She’s been locked inside his mind this whole time.


	27. Chapter 27

Everyone knows about the girl who held back the storms, but, as Charles had quickly come to realize as a child, almost no one actually _knows_ her.  
  
Even now, _he_ doesn’t know her so much as knows _about_ her: as he’d left her quarters, he’d plucked the most basic details from her mind, but anything more invasive had been left to the imagination. She hadn’t deserved his scrutiny after what she’d been through.  
  
Ororo Monroe: born in the old world, before the storms destroyed so much and had orphaned her at their onset. She’d taken to the streets at a young age—or, what was left of the streets. The world had been chaotic, with bodies in the streets, and while mutants could adapt to whatever was in the storms— _radiation_ , Ororo’s mind had said, though she doesn’t know the truth of it, really—they couldn’t adapt to having no food, and the storms had killed off crops and animals alike. It had been rather handy, having the ability to part the clouds, just long enough to make something grow.  
  
Or, it had been handy right up until Shaw caught her at it.  
  
Nothing about it was very much _good_ after that.  
  
But… in addition to all that… “What in the world are you doing hiding out in the army that’s invading my region?”   
  
Bless her, Ororo’s face cracks into a grin, and she pushes herself to her feet, loose and easy and all of the things that have been so elusive in the recent past. It’s good to see her again, this person that, once, he’d done right by. Really, it is. Like looking a good choice in the eyes.  
  
“How else was I supposed to get anywhere near you?” she asks, right before—oh, that’s rather forward of her, but good, yes, very good.  
  
Ororo’s arms are strong and warm, and there’s an unusual comfort to her embrace.  
  
Everything stops. This is—it’s—no one but Erik has touched him this way since Moira, and it’s never so uncomplicated with Erik. But Ororo—Ororo’s touch—doesn’t induce guilt and emotional baggage and the knowledge that giving, even a little, is the wrong thing to do. To think, that being held is such a luxury.  
  
But it _is_.  
  
His tension drains more quickly than should be physically possible, retreating in the face of the fact that she’s warm and _here_ , holding and offering friendship, and only friendship, with no fear of pushing that solid barrier. She’s seen too much, endured too much, to want him—or anyone, most likely—as anything more than a friend.  
  
She’s safe for him. She doesn’t mean harm.  
  
“I—you—you were supposed to run away. That’s why I did it. After Shaw was killed and people found out what I was, I wiped you out of my mind. You shouldn’t be back here. If Erik finds you—“  
  
Scoffing, she pushes back, clamping down on his shoulders and holding him out at arms length. Despite a petite appearance, she’s strong: her hands are firm and capable. “He’ll what? Use me to conquer the regions? When you and he split and he began consolidating the regions, I feared he’d try to use me to do that. But what I think both of us forget is that _I_ was never the one he wanted.”  
  
Frost clucks her tongue disapprovingly. How disappointing, that she hasn’t left. It had been possible to forget her for those last few seconds in the face of Ororo’s kindness. “Xavier always knew Lehnsherr wanted him. Let’s not be more charitable than the facts call for.”  
  
The look on his face feels filthy, but he’s not going to dial it back down—not for _Frost_. “Erik wasn’t supposed to find out what I am. If Shaw hadn’t injured me, this never would have been a problem.”  
  
“No.” Cold, clipped—gods forbid she’d ever let him lie to himself. “This never would have been a problem if _you_ hadn’t taken that wound out of some completely ridiculous attachment to a man who has now decimated your life.” She huffs. “Have I missed anything?”  
  
Yes: everything important. “If I hadn’t stopped Shaw, he would have killed Erik.”  
  
“And it never crossed your mind to _let_ him do that, and to take the opening that would have then given you? You, a celebrated tactical mind? And that never occurred to you?”  
  
Ororo’s hands, which had been lingering on his arms, drop away, dragging out trails of pressure down his limbs before parting contact altogether. It’s harder than it should be not to flinch at the loss of contact—and to keep his eyes trained on Frost. “Erik was my friend.”  
  
If she rolls her eyes any higher, they’ll lodge up in her skull. “And now he’s your husband. Did you get what you wanted?”  
  
“Have _you_?”  
  
No verbal response: she narrows her eyes and crosses her arms, sinking her fingertips into the soft white of her jacket. The material crinkles under her fingers, but she’s somehow kept herself immaculate even out in the field: there’s no stain on the clothing to indicate she’s touched it.  
  
“You’re the one voluntarily working for him, Frost. Or did you forget that you ripped my mind open on his command?”  
  
“I _sealed_ your mind, Xavier. You should be _thanking_ me.”  
  
For some of the worst minutes of his life? She’d reduced him to sobbing, she’d ripped memories out of his head, and she’d given Erik another handful of control—and she expects a _thank-you?_  
  
There simply are not enough ways in the world to say, “Go to Hell.”  
  
The way this is going, bloodshed is quickly becoming a more imminent possibility—which Ororo must see—a blind man could probably see it—or else she’s simply gifted with spectacular luck: either way, she steps between them, snapping a look of reprimand over at Emma before turning on him with a less venom-laced—though still plenty consternated—expression.  
  
Frost—gods, Ororo’s reprimand actually _worked_ on Frost, and how the hell is that possible? Anyone else Frost would have ripped apart, but here she is merely sighing. “Look, Sugar: we both know there are secrets in that head of yours that could either save or condemn entire regions.”  
  
“You were working with _Shaw_ ,” he snarls out, because, really? That can’t be so easily overlooked.  
  
She nods, careful and measured. “I knew what Shaw was like, but by the time I figured that out, I was already in too deep. I’m not proud of it, but—“  
  
“She helped me get out of the capital.”  
  
The way Ororo says it, there’s no doubt that she’s thankful for it too, and—more than a little loyal to Frost. Not a follower, exactly—not the kind of loyalty that implies agreement—but the sort that prompts never-leave-a-man-behind. The proof of that is there in the steel undercurrent of her voice, and the half-apologetic tone that overlays it.  
  
But Ororo isn’t finished: “When she joined up with Lehnsherr’s army, she got me a place as her assistant. She—”  
  
“You knew who she was, Xavier,” Frost snaps out, apparently fed up with waiting for Ororo’s more tactful explanation. “And if Lehnsherr found that out, he might have used you to find her. I needed to make sure that was properly hidden in your mind.”  
  
“And Erik simply trusted you with my mind? He wouldn’t do that.”  
  
She hardly needs to reply: the subtle tip of her head is a taunt all on its own. This is Frost, though: she’ll never miss an opportunity to get in another jab. “Maybe he doesn’t care about you as much as you think.”  
  
Of all the things in the world that are uncertain? The amount that Erik _cares_ is not one of those things. “Or maybe there’s more to this than you’re telling me.”  
  
As unyielding as Frost is, though, she’s not cruel for the sake of cruelty. Nor, in his experience, is she particularly inclined to lie if it won’t gain her anything. And, in this case, she eases: something, then, has prompted her to unwrap the truth—if, indeed, that’s what she plans to tell him.  
  
“Erik and I, we have an understanding,” she admits with a small, self-deprecating smile. “We… have something of a history, you might say. Or… we share bits of the same history.”  
  
Yes, Erik has a lot of history. That doesn’t necessarily make Emma Frost special. “Yes, I’m sure. But I don’t imagine it’s the sort of history that would allow you to blackmail him into allowing you access to my mind. _You_ wouldn’t do that, knowing that, if you did, he’d figure there was something in my mind you wanted. You don’t want him looking too closely.” Regrettably, the alternative is equally as poisonous. “Which means he has something on _you_ that is damaging enough to reassure him that you wouldn’t harm me _.”_  
  
Wonderful. Erik is dabbling in blackmail now too.  
  
Frost chuckles and catches Ororo’s eye—who, incidentally, looks nowhere near as enthused. Ororo isn’t the one who has just admitted to being blackmailed, and yet she’s the one more strained by the situation. “Close, Xavier, but not quite,” Frost answers. “What he has on me is worse, but I know enough about him to make his life very difficult if I choose to… hmm, allow that information to _slip_.”  
  
It wouldn’t be exactly difficult to surmise that Erik has things in his past that are dangerous to his future. Finding out what those things are? Much harder. Erik is a closed book for most everyone.  
  
 _Almost_ everyone.  
  
Feeling flattered for being an exception is unhealthy. Erik, after what he’s done, should practically be serving up his past on a golden platter—which is, in a fashion, what he’s doing. Ask any question about his past, and get an answer. Not a bad wedding gift, when Erik’s past is such a prized commodity.  
  
But… that freedom to ask only helps if one knows what to ask _about._  
  
Frost might. Frost _does_.  
  
And, damn it, she knows it. No cat ever looked so smug at getting cream as she does right now. That smugness is mitigated, held in check, but she still nearly simmers with her self-satisfaction.      
  
“Say I believe you.” And there’s no reason to think she’s lying. What she’s said makes sense. “It still doesn’t mean—“  
  
“I’ve been inside his mind.”  
  
What?  
  
That’s… surprising. A claim like that—is there an easy response to that kind of an informational bomb? Something she’d like to hear him say? Whether or not her claim is true is another matter, not aided by her casual admittance: if Erik is so eager to suppress whatever Frost knows, the last person in the world she should tell is the husband of the person over whom she has a hold.  
  
That said: her claim rings true. There’s nothing concrete to prove that—no facts to hold it solid—but there’s an aspect of it that simply _feels_ correct. It slots with facts and personalities, and with what he knows of Erik and Frost.  
  
But that isn’t enough. Not by any means. It’s only a starting point.  
  
“Most of what I saw, I imagine he’d tell you himself,” she admits with a small shrug. “Personal details. But I’m sure he’d be much less eager to have you knowing the specifics of his interactions with Shaw. And I expect the regions would be far less accepting of him if they knew some of the things he’s done. He’d have a good chance of talking his way out of it, but that information would always be there to haunt him. What I know might not cripple him, but it would certainly handicap him.”  
  
“If that’s true, there’s no reason you’d be telling _me_.”  
  
As tightly as she draws her eyebrows up, it’s easy to imagine that she’s seeing him as the archetype of a lamentably slow pupil who it is her misfortune to teach. “Don’t be stupid, Xavier: telling _you_ doesn’t mean telling the public. Tell _you_ , and Lehnsherr’s secret is still safe— _and_ I gain the added addition of protection: if you know, and I suddenly turn up dead, you’ll look straight to your husband as the cause. It will be yet another divide between the two of you. And Lehnsherr doesn’t _want_ that.”  
  
True. But that doesn’t make the gamble any less risky. Erik is no stranger to conjugal embitterment, and if it means protecting his reputation, he might well weigh the cost and find that he’s willing to pay it.  
  
“At the moment, you’ve told me nothing.”  
  
Her cheeks are looking a bit flushed. It’s not embarrassment, so likely it’s along the lines of enthusiasm, or, better stated, some form of fervency. She’d like to see Erik fall as much as anyone, and having information to tell must be quite the treat.  
  
“Your husband was with Shaw right up until about six months before he came knocking at your door, asking for assistance. Did you never think to question why so many of Shaw’s men were willing to defect and join Lehnsherr?”  
  
Anyone with any sense at all would have wondered—and Erik’s eyes weren’t pretty enough to wipe out sense altogether. As immediate as their connection had been, that doesn’t mean everything else was tossed by the wayside.  
  
No. That didn’t happen until much later.  
  
Speaking of sense: trusting Frost implicitly is the height of stupidity. Gut feeling or not, she’d better back herself up with evidence: “You _still_ haven’t gotten around to telling me anything, Frost. You want me to believe your claims, you had better offer me a convincing argument.”  
  
“How about this: ask your husband. He’ll confirm what I say.”  
  
Tucking his arms behind his back, he shifts his shoulders and leans into the tug of stiff muscles. It’s all tension, knotting up, and while this conversation isn’t promising to turn pleasant anytime soon, Ororo’s sudden reaction to that comment does hold the potential to mitigate some of those knots of anxiety: if she’s talking, Frost isn’t.  
  
“Lehnsherr won’t lie to you,” Ororo points out, watching him with serious eyes. “Not directly. He’ll omit things, but if you tell him what you know, he won’t try to convince you otherwise.”  
  
Not such a soothing anecdote after all. “And you’re willing to rely on that?”  
  
Ororo shakes her head and frowns. “No. Not entirely. I _do_ believe it’s true, though: you must have guessed that you’ve been watched, Charles. Anyone you’ve had regular contact with, Frost has scanned. Hank McCoy? He may not know it, but he’s been an extensive source of information.”  
  
Gods, Hank, that isn’t fair—  
  
“I have to hand it to you,” Frost says, curling her tongue around the words and rolling them out, “You hid the information well in his mind. But, unlike Lehnsherr, _I_ know what I’m looking for. I know how a telepath hides things. It wasn’t difficult, uncovering his memories and tugging a few out.”  
  
“I… don’t remember what I told him.”  
  
Whatever it was, it must have been good: the corners of Frost’s mouth poke up into her cheeks, and her eyes pulse with a glow of what appears to be satisfaction. And there’s no other word for it: she damn near preens, holding her head a few inches higher and thoroughly enjoying that she’s forced him to recognize his ignorance. “No. And for _very_ good reason. Erik would flay him alive for helping you—and he’s helped you more than you know. In this case, he’s helped just by providing us with a look at how Lehnsherr treats you. What Lehnsherr tells you matches what McCoy knows of events outside the palace—with the exception of omissions. According to what McCoy—and what other servants, some even loyal to Lehnsherr—has seen, Lehnsherr doesn’t lie to you, though he may not tell you everything.”  
  
This must be what a goldfish feels like. “Fine.” It isn’t fine. Not at all. But, for the time being, fine is relative, and he’s on the verge of gaining valuable information. “You tell me what you know, and I’ll toss it out at Erik and see how he reacts.”  
  
Frost looks over at Ororo, who, though her face is hard set and uncomfortable, nods in return. “Enjoy the show then, Sugar.”  
  
Telepathy. She’s going to—  
  
The force of her mind hits him with more enthusiasm than necessary, and the quick jolt of satisfaction indicates that wasn’t an accident. Sadistic bitch. She’ll probably get her kicks from having Erik see this and know he can do nothing about it.  
  
And it is quickly becoming clear that this is _all_ about Erik.  
  
 _/“Erik.”_  
  
 _Shaw has the manners of an aristocrat—though, one from new money, someone who has learned his role well, but without the flawless lack of effort that comes only from generations of entitlement. Regardless, he gets on well enough: the amicable, open smile that he has plastered over his face is exactly fake enough to remind anyone in his vicinity that this is a living chess game where the people have become both players and actors, painting a new face for every circumstance. Find yourself outmaneuvered, and any mask you’re wearing will be stripped away to leave you drowning in your helplessness. A lie is far better than a display of powerlessness._  
  
 _“Sir.”_  
  
 _Shaw’s smile widens a little further. “Remind me how old you are, Son.”_  
  
 _Shaw knows exactly how old he is, but there was never any question of not answering. “Thirty, Sir.”_  
  
 _“Ah, yes, that’s right.” Pivoting, he strides off across the room toward the mini-bar in the corner. People are starving, but gods forbid Shaw would go without his luxuries. “Sixteen years you’ve been with me. It doesn’t seem that long.”_  
  
 _It seems_ precisely _that long. Longer, actually._  
  
 _“You know how I like things done. I appreciate that.”_  
  
 _It’s going to be one of_ these _days, then, where Shaw feels the need to indirectly hint at the results of not completing given tasks up to the very highest standards. Someone further down the chain must have botched an operation that requires a clean-up._  
  
 _“Yes, Sir.” And: burn in hell, Sir—that that’s the kind of thing that, whether or not Shaw knows it’s being thought, must remain_ only _as thought. Say it to Shaw’s face, and..._  
  
 _Well, broken bones don’t heal quickly. And muscles tend to cramp when you’re locked in a closet for too long. Blood doesn’t have the sense to stay_ inside _the body, and, as it turns out, having a plastic gun to one’s head does tend to induce a level of obedience that wouldn’t be otherwise possible. It took hours last time before Shaw let him stop carving that woman up and finally allowed him to slit her throat and put her out of her misery. Shaw had taken the baby, though: just like Erik, it might have been from a dissenting religion, but it was young enough to train up to follow Shaw. The woman? Bearer or not, she was dangerous: she_ remembered _things from the world before, ideas that Shaw needs stamped out so badly that he’d even ensured that her killer was someone who already knew what she had to say, lest she spread her propaganda any further in the midst of her dying babble._  
  
 _As it turns out, it’s useful to keep at least a few who have been exposed to an illegal religion: keep them on a short leash and turn them into exterminators against their own kind._  
  
 _“Have a drink, Erik, and we’ll talk about the job I have for you.”_  
  
 _They’ll talk—_  
  
 _Shaw has been talking for what feels like hours. Xavier this and Xavier that. If this man is really as much trouble as Shaw makes him out to be, maybe there’s some hope that he could be useful. It depends on how willing he would be to ally against Shaw. There are enough people in the army who hate Shaw, who would be willing to defect. It’s taken years to build the kind of network necessary, and it won’t be enough on its own, but perhaps with Xavier…._  
  
 _Xavier might have a fresh way to approach Shaw. Inside knowledge is all well and good, but Shaw knows his minions as well as they know him: having been with Shaw since childhood will only be so much help. But Xavier could take that inside information and build with it—make a plan that Shaw wouldn’t see coming._  
  
 _Getting to Xavier will be the problem. Shaw is careful. Being considered more or less a puppet incapable of sustaining himself only goes so far: if he runs and gets caught, Shaw will work him over and stop him from trying again._  
  
 _But, if he could do it—_  
  
 _“Kill him, Erik. I know you can: you’ve done it before.”_  
  
 _Yes, but never with someone who has an iron deficiency. Grabbing a hold of the metal in someone’s blood and ripping it from his body is easier when there is a sufficient amount of iron._  
  
 _Easier, too, when the person in question isn’t a member of the resistance._  
  
 _“I will count to three, Erik.”_  
  
 _This time,_ he _—not Shaw—is the one to cause the blood to splatter against the wall._  
  
 _“Kill them all.”_  
  
 _And why not? Death is the best they’ll get now. Twenty dissenters, some common citizens, who Shaw suspects of thinking disloyally. There’s no proof, but Shaw has never needed proof. And if they aren’t killed now, Shaw will do worse._  
  
 _Erik runs his knife—no hands—across the first man’s throat and watches him fall—_  
  
 _—watches the building fall on Shaw’s command. Screams, people running—_  
  
 _“Who are you?”_  
  
 _He’s only a child. Big brown eyes and untidy blond hair, but he’s from an important—if disloyal—family, and he’s tested positive as a bearer, and fuck if that doesn’t mean his life is over. He’s a mutant already—he’s going to be powerful—and, barely thirteen or not, Shaw will see him married off. He’ll wait until he’s off age to see him publically married, but he’ll hand him over far before that. Creed is next in line, right? Maybe. It’s difficult to remember which piece of scum is next entitled to a mate._  
  
 _“I’m Magneto.”_  
  
 _Someday, he’ll never use that name again. Someday, when Shaw is dead. And he will—he’ll kill Shaw. He might have to take this boy and hand him over today, but some day soon when he’s ripping Shaw’s entrails out, he’ll think of the boy and the others like him while he’s doing it._  
  
 _The boy swallows. “Please. Let me go. I don’t—I don’t want—“_  
  
 _He shakes his head. “None of us do. But we don’t always get what we want.”_  
  
 _“Don’t you have a bearer—don’t you understand—?“_  
  
 _“No.” He’ll never have a bearer. The idea of accepting that degree of vulnerability—death is such an easy thing. If there were a bearer, and if he were in love with that bearer, and that bearer ever ended up like this…_  
  
 _Shaw may have a good many things wrong, but the idea of keeping bearers safe away from the world makes sense. It isn’t good and it isn’t kind, but this child is about to be tossed into the arms of someone who won’t care for him, and it could have been prevented if he’d been kept safe. Why didn’t anyone keep him_ safe _?_  
  
 _If it were someone else, someone kinder—Azazel isn’t brutal, and Riptide—it wouldn’t be so bad. But not_ Creed. _But if it’s not this child then it will be another. There will_ always _be another. Another bearer. And killing a bearer is a horrible crime. Shaw does it, but even he is sparing, more so as the population wavers. And if not this child, then another will come._  
  
 _But… this child is_ here _, cowering amongst the ruins of his family’s house. This child is his to turn in—or not. No one would know. No one_ will _know._  
  
 _“I don’t have a bearer,” he says again, reaching out for the boy, who flinches back against the wall. His trousers are torn and his face is smudged with mud, but he’s remarkably brave in the face of what he surely must believe he’s encountering. “But, if I did, I’d take care of him. The person you’re going to won’t do that. And I won’t—I won’t—” He will not be so weak in front of a child. He_ will not _. “I won’t let that happen to you.”_  
  
 _The hope that blooms in the child’s eyes in the worst. It stays, right up until the knife rakes across his throat. The boy never saw it coming, and the aim is perfect: right over the jugular, and the boy has only enough time for a flash of surprise before he bleeds out. It’s better that way. Better than what Creed would have done._  
  
 _Wiping the knife, Erik tucks it back in his belt and rises. It was a mercy. It was the best mercy he could give, and when the boy is found in the midst of the rubble, there will be no evidence that this was anything other than a mistake—just Shaw’s men accidentally eliminating a bearer during their lust for the kill. That’s all._  
  
 _And it was the best the boy could be given._  
  
 _“The best, you say?”_  
  
 _“Yes, Sir. I am the best at what I do.”_  
  
 _Shaw cocks an eyebrow and gestures for the other men in the room—there are only a few of them—to leave. They scatter with the kind of enthusiasm that comes from knowing any hesitancy will gain them a great deal of pain._  
  
 _“I suppose you are,” Shaw says thoughtfully once they’ve gone. “Remarkably good, yes, at assassination. And I wonder how the world would take it, if they knew you were the one who has killed so very many of their own over the years?”_  
  
 _“I do as you order, Sir.” A bit too much personality in that statement, and Shaw catches that easily enough. That isn’t good: if there isn’t immediate retaliation, that means Shaw is planning a worse eventuality._  
  
 _“But you don’t, Erik. That’s the problem.” Circling, he paces back around the room to stand tall in front of Erik. Their heights are well matched, but it couldn’t be clearer who has the upper hand. “Everything needs to be in its place. The common man was never meant to rule, Erik. And that you persist in helping those beneath you—it disappoints me, Son. Their place is at our feet.”_  
  
 _Don’t react. Don’t give him what he wants._  
  
 _But, in the face of a lack of reaction, Shaw simply huffs and rolls his eyes. “You always were a slow learner. Perhaps a demonstration, then. Get on your knees.”_  
  
 _It isn’t the first time this has happened. The first time he refused and told Shaw to go fuck himself, and Shaw had locked him in a tiny windowless room for upwards of a week. Food once daily, and pissing in the corner. In a level cell, that doesn’t work too well._  
  
 _Sucking Shaw off is a small price to pay to avoid that._  
  
 _Today, it goes as it always has the few times this has happened: Shaw undoes his belt and his trousers and pulls his cock out, stroking it a few times before waving a hand and gesturing for Erik to get on with it. Thank the gods this isn’t a regular occurrence. Shaw doesn’t seem all that interested in him sexually—not beyond the idea of power. Overall, he’s more attracted to women._  
  
 _“Now see, Erik: it doesn’t feel right, being on your knees, does it? You’re a guardian, meant to father children. You aren’t meant to act like a bearer or a sterile.”_  
  
 _It doesn’t. It doesn’t feel right_ at all _. Worse, when Shaw feeds his cock past Erik’s lips, sliding in to set it heavily on Erik’s tongue. He makes sure to curl his lips over his teeth. Shaw beat him the last time there was a hint of tooth, back when he couldn’t have been much more than eighteen and doing this for the first time._  
 _“It isn’t healthy, to pretend to be what you aren’t.” A grunt, and Shaw thrusts his hips forward. Too much—Erik chokes, but he swallows down and manages to recover. “A guardian acting the part of a sterile or a bearer—it isn’t right. The same is true of you, Erik, when you don’t follow my orders. It isn’t_ right. _You were meant to do as I say. You’re too weak to be your own man.”_  
  
 _It isn’t true. If there’s one thing that Shaw has never able to stamp out of him, it’s_ this _._  
  
 _“When you don’t do as I say, it’s the same as what you’re doing now: you’re acting as something you aren’t. Look at you, down on your knees… Denying your biology is never a good idea, you know. Does it feel right, doing what you’re doing right now?”_  
  
 _No. Gods, no. Guardians aren’t meant to act like bearers, or even steriles. A bearer would surely be equally as unhappy acting like a guardian. Everything in its place: Shaw isn’t wrong. He’s just wrong about what_ Erik’s _place is./_  
  
“He left, you know,” Emma says casually as the world begins to slot back into place. Her withdrawal from his mind is far less than gentle, and the world swims with disorientation. A few quick breaths break through the fog, thankfully, and he’s back to staring over at Frost and Ororo, the later of whom is looking at him worriedly while the former heedlessly inspects her nails. “Lehnsherr, that is. Not too long after that last bit of memory. Did you ever ask him?”  
  
“I _know_ about what time he left Shaw. Or did you forget that he ended up in Westchester?”  
  
Who the hell _wouldn’t_ have left, given the chance? That last part—what Shaw did to him….  
  
She rolls her eyes and drops her arm, letting it swing loosely down over the side of the chair. “No, Xavier. Don’t be stupid. Didn’t you ever ask him about _how_ he was able to raise a force to aid yours? Didn’t you ever think to ask _why_ he left Shaw?”  
  
“I knew he was involved with Shaw’s guard and that he convinced a large number of those disenchanted with Shaw to follow him instead. Erik is persuasive. I wasn’t surprised he managed to raise a force. As to _why_ he left—I should think that’s obvious. It was _Shaw.”_  
  
Ororo hums in agreement, but Frost retains her less-than-impressed stare. “He gained their support because he was one of them, Xavier. He worked for Shaw. People may know that, but they don’t what that _means._ They don’t know what he did. Your husband killed families of the very people he now rules. That gets out, and—“  
  
“He’ll end up hated. Yes, I know. But you don’t expect me to share those memories with anyone but Erik, and I don’t intend to do so. What he did under Shaw, he did because he was forced to do so. He has plenty of crimes that he’s committed under his own power: I don’t need to hold against him those that weren’t his fault.”  
  
She huffs, though there’s some real amusement there, showing through in her easy sprawl. This isn’t a deck chair in the sun, for godsakes. “Forgiving of you.”  
  
“Maybe. But it’s also practical. Painting Erik as a villain on the same tier as Shaw is in no one’s best interest—especially not when everything you just showed me was incredibly jumbled. Memories like those—they make context notoriously unreliable. If you want to put Erik on trial, do it with things he’s actually guilty of—and get a reliable read on his memories while you’re at it.”  
  
It says something, that she doesn’t protest that point. “Mmm, well, I didn’t exactly obtain those memories in the most stable of situations.”  
  
“Oh?”  
  
“Ask your husband.”  
  
And he surely will—although there’s the possibility that the answer won’t be a favorable one. The smugness that’s leeching all the softness out of Frost’s body is worrying at best, and infuriating at worst.  
  
“The point is, Xavier, I couldn’t use those memories even if I wanted to: I betray him, and he’ll kill me.”  
  
“He doesn’t actually _enjoy_ killing you know.” The words are out of his mouth before he can catch them, and while his emotions tumble after, desperately trying to grab the meaning back and bury it, Frost has already snatched the thought out of the air before he has a chance to begin mounting defenses.  
  
Her lips curl, thin and almost razor sharp at the edges, up over her teeth. It would be a pretty smile, if there were any warmth to it. “Touching. Is a good fuck really all it takes to sway you, Xavier? “  
  
“Is the promise of one the only sway _you_ ever hold?” And, in Erik’s case, was it more than a promise? Surely not with Frost. Erik hates her. He wouldn’t have slept with her.  
  
Far from being insulted, Frost meets his eyes with ease: she was expecting that, then, and, from the way she lets the words wash over her, she’s probably heard it before. Right. Of _course_ she has. Stupid thought. “Business and pleasure, Honey,” she answers, flexing her fingers and slipping to her feet. She rests her weight on her right foot, left hip jutting outward lazily. “Might as well mix them. Though, in your case that worked out rather poorly.”  
  
They won’t reach any manner of agreement—are they bargaining?—carrying on like this. Perhaps… _understanding_ might be the better word. Not agreement. An understanding. “If you wanted my memories secured, why did you help Erik pull several of them back into operation?”  
  
“Why not? He already knew those memories were there, and it was a small price to pay, giving him something he basically already had, in order to have the chance to make sure your memory of Ororo was tucked safely away. It was more than burying them—I needed to make sure they’d _stay_ buried.”  
  
Of all the sensations he’s experienced often as of late, this one, where his stomach drops somewhere near to the toes, may be his least favorite. “You have blocks in my mind.”  
  
Frost glances at Ororo, but she must find what she wants quickly enough, since Frost’s attention focuses back in on him seconds later. Hard to tell: Ororo has turned her face completely toward Frost. “I never could do that ordinarily. Your shields are too strong. But with Lehnsherr holding your mind open for me—it was the only way I could ensure the memory was locked. Your own blocks—Lehnsherr can rip through those now, and while he’s not likely to be able to find something you’ve hidden, I wasn’t willing to risk it. I wanted my own assurances.”  
  
“So you put them there.” His limbs are as numb as his voice—sinking, down toward his toes along with his stomach: what she’s saying makes good sense, but the thought of her in his head, rooting around—the room feels cold all of a sudden, and his flesh is pimpling, the hair on his arms standing on end.  
  
“So I put them there,” she agrees, nodding, as if this is nothing more than business. Sharp and to the point. “Lehnsherr might be able to break down _your_ blocks, but if he wants to tear down _my_ blocks, he’d have to use _your_ mind to do it—and, even if your bond means he technically has the ability to do exactly that, in practice I doubt he knows how to use your powers to find, let alone pick apart, another telepath’s shields within _your_ mind. Even for you, that would be difficult—and Lehnsherr has no experience with your abilities.”  
  
As plans go, it’s solid. Tactically sound. Not perfect, of course, but logically considered. And Frost—she’s exactly mercenary enough to carry it out. If her choice was between violating the mind of another telepath and covering her own ass, there was never any question what she’d choose.  
  
What she _is_ choosing.  
  
“And you’ll have to do it again,” he murmurs, dropping his chin and staring up at her, and trying, very, very hard, not to hate her on principle alone. That’s a failing endeavor, and the burning mess of that hate turns his stomach.  
  
Though, there’s something to be said for the fact that she doesn’t try to sugarcoat her transgressions: “You’ll let me hide this memory for you, or you’ll incriminate _all_ of us.”  
  
Not just him. Not her. But Ororo Monroe too.  
  
After all those years, Ororo deserves better.  
  
Such perfect, well-planned emotional extortion—because there was never any question that she’s taken the measure of him and is aiming directly for where it will hurt most. Being backed into a corner is not a pleasant sensation, but, regrettably, it’s one that’s becoming more familiar. Be it Erik or Frost, it’s smothering, anxious—but, with a little wiggling, there’s room to maneuver.  
  
And, in this case, that chance to maneuver comes in the form of Ororo: Frost is as diamond-hard in empathy as in mutation, and, as the saying goes, she’s her own best friend—hardly the type to assist anyone free of charge, and friendship doesn’t pay the price. But Ororo knows what it is to be forced down and locked up. She’s a more likely source than Frost.  
  
If there’s information to be had, it will be had from _her_.  
  
“You didn’t walk me into this tent and tell me all this just to wipe my mind of it again.” There, good: the words, mostly directed toward Ororo, seem to penetrate, and though her body remains angled to the side, she turns her face back toward him.  
  
“No,” Ororo agrees. “We didn’t.”  
  
A good start. “What, then?”  
  
And, for the first time since he’s seen her here today, a bit of her composure shakes loose. She reaches up, running her fingers through the strands of her hair, down to the ends; she shakes her hand loose and then returns, gathering the strands up and tossing them behind her, down her back. “We need your help. There’s a contingent of people in Westchester who are furious that a bearer held the throne, but, for the most part, the people are desperate—or, in some cases, loyal—enough to overlook that. Your military success is a well-known fact: if you’re their chance for driving out Lehnsherr, then you’re a chance they’ll take, bearer or not.”  
  
Until the end, perhaps: if Erik could be driven out and the region returned to its own autonomy, they might no longer be so keen to be ruled by a bearer. Necessity would give way to decorum. And what then? But… his son isn’t a bearer, and—if he could keep control until David is of age, there would be hope.  
  
But keeping control would hardly be that easy. If _he_ were the one visibly holding power, it might not be possible. But, if there were someone else, until David was old enough—but to give them legitimacy, they’d have to—have to—  
  
The pointlessness of denying reality in his own mind is ridiculous, and, furthermore, not something he can afford. Face it, then, face it like the coward he’s claiming not to be, not vulnerable, not the weak bearer everyone says he his, and here he can’t handle his own thoughts—  
  
It isn’t possible. The situation he’s hoping for, it _just isn’t possible._  
  
There. The thought is there, in the forefront of his mind: it’s been _thought_.  
  
And it’s burning like acid.  
  
The best way to lend someone legitimacy without allowing them to usurp David’s eventual position would be to marry: to act out what happens when the only heir is a bearer. And that’s not even possible, not anymore, not when he has a living mate. With Erik’s mind active in his, another bond can’t be formed, and, possible or not—no. The mere thought—the agony of that thought, of the bond breaking, when there’s only one way to make that happen—if he has to be bonded, for it to not be to Erik—  
  
His stomach flips over, which is quite a feat, when some part of it feels as though it’s still in his toes.  
  
The answer, then, is this: keeping control? It. Isn’t. Possible.  
  
Once, he’d thought impossible was only a challenge. Where’s the man who thought like that? The man who could bargain his way out of anything, and, if that failed, could talk his way out, sneak his way out, kick in the back door and steal out, if it came to that, and if all options had been exhausted and that was all that was left.  
  
He can do this. He _can_.  
  
There _must_ be a way around the impossible.  
  
“If I help you, we both know they’ll depose me the moment Erik is expelled.”  
  
Ororo is motionless, watching him with large, thoughtful eyes—not gentle, not naïve, but with the bitterness of someone who knows the feeling. An unworkable situation. Best to survive and get on with it. She _would_ understand.  
  
But Frost—she scrutinizes him with the bearing of someone faced with a worthless obstacle.  
  
“I have a son,” he murmurs, drawing himself up and meeting her, holding her gaze and daring her, near about baiting her—Erik would probably laugh—to push this onward. “I don’t care whether _I_ keep the throne—but I won’t see David stripped of his birthright. Even Erik has offered me that much: you’ll have to offer me something equally as good or, preferably, better.”  
  
Of all the things he expected to see in Ororo’s eyes, respect for that wasn’t one of them. Strange.  
  
Frost is nowhere near as impressed. “You would play Lehnsherr’s whore for the rest of your life for that alone? Sugar, I don’t think you’ve thought that through.”  
  
Of all the things he’s considered, this is probably the only one with which he can settle on with any certainty. “I’d do anything for my son,” he answers blankly. “What’s your excuse for loaning out _your_ sex?”  
  
Her nose wrinkles, and, if he didn’t know better, he’d swear she’s smelling something unpleasant. “I’m not sleeping with your husband, Xavier.”  
  
“No, I expect not. Just any other interested parties in a position of power.” Cruelty has become another tool, and to win, it’s unavoidable when dealing with Frost, no matter how distasteful it feels. And so: “Though, I’m sure you _would_ sleep with Erik if you thought it would get you somewhere—and if he’d have you. Odd, how if _I_ sleep with my husband, you see fit to brand me a whore, while _you_ can sleep with whomever you please, and, for lack of a fertile womb, you’re merely seizing opportunity.”  
  
Two seconds more and she’ll quite likely lunge for his throat. Who would have thought someone so taken with the color white could burn so bright? What a mess that soot would make in the pristine color of her mind.  
  
Thankfully, Ororo takes the opportunity to make a full step forward, blocking the distance between them and obstructing the line of sight. She’s already speaking before she stops moving, but she settles into her stance through the swing of her words: “If you help expel Lehnsherr from the region, the people will owe you a debt. It might not be enough to seat you on the throne, but it should be enough that, any officials you appoint during the war—your choices should be respected. And your line has been on Westchester’s throne for centuries now. That won’t be so easily disregarded. Your people might surprise you.”  
  
Maybe. But maybe _not_. “It’s not enough. I want a guarantee.”  
  
Dropping her chin, she stares over at him solemnly, and, though he doesn’t know her well enough to say for certain, an expression like that would be hard pressed to conceal a lie. “There _is_ no guarantee. Not for any of us, on anything. You should know that better than anyone. That won’t change specially for your son. But it’s a trade-off: Lehnsherr can help you ensure that your son gets the throne; but, by the time your son is old enough to inherit, what will Lehnsherr have taught him to believe?”  
  
If all the air in the world vanished, it wouldn’t be this bad: this is being caught in a vacuum, imploding inward and losing his breath so completely that he turns inside out.  
  
She’s _right_. And he’s known it all along. Denial works for a time, but that he’s here at all, entertaining this plan when, if all he wanted was David on the throne, he already has what he wants—it proves, better than any rhetoric, that this _must_ have been simmering in his mind somewhere.  
  
David still has a chance at the throne if Erik is deposed, but, more than that, he won’t grow up being told how terrible humans are—how terrible his very human mother was.  
  
This choice—it’s really no choice at all.  
  
“Why are _you_ doing this?” he asks, and, that—his voice—it’s so dull, not much like what it ought to be, or what it was, when he ruled. Understanding a person, knowing that they can be trusted: for that, motivations are _everything._  
  
Ororo—it’s Ororo, not Monroe, merely because it has to be. There has to be familiarity somewhere. Just a hope to cling to. So, _Ororo_ : she waits, pausing, with whatever answer she has stashed away in her head.  
  
Finally, she blinks, reaching out to clutch one wrist with her opposite hand. The wrist is covered by fabric, but—  
  
If it weren’t covered, the mark would be visible.  
  
“We’ve had three hundred years of unchecked rule. I thought, if I could be free of Shaw, it would be different. But it’s not. And it won’t be, until control is returned solely to the regions, and we break the hold created by Shaw’s propaganda.”  
  
Three hundred years, and, at the end, when they’d faced Shaw, it had become clear that he manipulated energy, kept himself young. Many would think it a boon to share that, but the years on Ororo’s face, while they’re not physical—nothing so visible as crow’s feet or wrinkles—are evidence of a much deeper aging: they scream the wrongness of those assumptions. Living forever is a burden in the best of circumstances, and having to do it with Shaw must have been soul-crushing. He’d needed her in order to perpetuate his own system—to convince people he too had taken a bearer—but he’d not cared for her beyond that. He isn’t capable.  
  
“The system won’t change,” he admits, trying not to look down toward her wrist. The itch on his own skin is reminder enough. “Bearers still won’t have the say they need, and humans—“  
  
“You were doing it in Westchester.” The hope shimmering in her eyes is the worst of all. “Shaw hated you, for what you were doing. You walked a line, keeping him off your back while still doing the best you could to make things fair. What would you have done, if it had really been up to you? It could be like that, for everyone.”  
  
“Shaw was smart: he made his laws religion, Ororo. He wove them into the fabric of society. People don’t abandon their beliefs simply because they suddenly have the freedom to do so.”  
  
A deep breath; she clenches down on her wrist. “But it’s a _start_. And not everyone believes what Shaw tried to tell them. People have a recollection of what it was like _before_.”  
  
A start means nothing at all if there’s nowhere to go from there. There has to be _more_. “Revolution for the sake of revolution, with nothing planned afterward, will gain us no ground, and very possibly we’ll end up equally as bad off as we are now.”  
  
“Xavier’s right.” Frost? Who would have thought: the sheer agony of agreeing with him must be nearly killing her. “We overthrow Lehnsherr, and the regions splinter. That is, unless someone can take control—someone who could be trusted to return that control to the regions.”  
  
Return control? Scarcely one in a thousand men is capable of that. “That’s by no means _you_ ,” he snaps—and, knee-jerk reaction or not, a few more seconds to consider doesn’t do much to make him want to take it back.  
  
“Don’t be stupid,” she returns, peering around Ororo’s body and, casual as anything, sauntering toward the other side of the room. “But, if you had the backing of the army, it could be _you_.”  
  
“They won’t follow me. Westchester, maybe, but not _everyone._ ”  
  
She pivots around to face him, tucking her arms behind her back. “It’s a matter of structure. If the higher-ups agree to follow you, then the grunts will too.”  
  
“And who exactly are these ‘higher-ups’?” Half-tempted to scoff, he looks away before the temptation becomes overwhelming. This is a half-baked plan at best, and yet—and _yet_ … “Right now, Westchester is the extent of the organized resistance. We drive Erik out of Westchester, then we have a start, yes. But it will take a lot more than that.”  
  
“Yes. But that allows us to start building infrastructure. You choose people whom you trust—“  
  
“Erik is currently holding prisoner those whom I trust.” Alex, Sean, Armando, even Kitty. There’s no one left to help.  
  
“—and, once Westchester is secure, the regions around it will rebel as well. Westchester will send them military aid, and integrate their leaders in under ours. We’ll—“  
  
“You’re suggesting similar tactics to what Shaw used.” He tucks his own hands behind his back to mirror her posture and, very deliberately, doesn’t look at Ororo. As little as he likes to be reminded of what’s happened with Erik, Shaw would have been a thousand times worse, and it can’t be pleasant for her to hear his name mentioned. “It’s essentially the same, only the force is coming down from the North: Westchester slowly spreads out its influence, same as Genosha did.”  
  
Frost raises her chin, haughty down to the slightest twitch of the pulse in her throat. “Don’t fix an unbroken thing, Xavier: if it worked for Shaw, why not reuse it?”  
  
Why not, indeed? Only because it has the potential to put them exactly back where they are now, only with Westchester at the center. But… doesn’t any plan? If Westchester leads up the resistance, then there’s always that risk.  
  
That doesn’t mean it’s something they should adopt, or that it’s actually possible: “The difference being, people followed Shaw. Convincing people to follow a bearer will be an added burden, and potentially one we can’t overcome.”  
  
Narrowing her eyes so thinly that the skin pinches at the corners, Frost takes a step forward. They’re of relatively equal height—or close enough that she’s able to look him directly in the eye—and she makes the most of it. A stare like that, it would cripple most people.  
  
Not him. She’ll have to do a damn sight better than that.  
  
“It’s the best option we have,” Frost tells him coolly, shifting her weight from foot to foot.  
  
Though he doesn’t look away—it would be too close to defeat, to be the first to break eye-contact—he does tilt his head in Ororo’s direction. “Ororo?”  
  
At first, it seems she won’t answer. There’s nothing, just silence, Frost’s gaze, and the horrible pregnant pause. But, eventually, there comes a soft sigh from her direction. Nothing more for a few moments, but, with that encouragement, the waiting becomes bearable. The reward comes a few heartbeats after that: “It’s the best plan we have,” she admits quietly.  
  
Gods help them, but it _is_. As messy and full of holes as it is—and they haven’t yet discussed practicalities—it’s better than doing nothing. Chances have to be taken in war. That’s simply reality.  
  
“All right,” he half-whispers, which can’t be helped. As strained as his voice is, volume is beyond his capability. “If this is the best—“  
  
“You could always simply kill Erik.”  
  
Bloody hell.  
  
All right, yes, this was bound to come up, and it’s logical that it’s Frost who finally mentions it. It’s an unavoidable option for anyone with a little ruthlessness and some common sense. How, then, is he not prepared? Bloody _hell…._  
  
He won’t—if he answers—if he even _considers_ the radiating ache that vibrates through him, this conversation will stall, and he’ll lose his composure completely. Logical, then, is the only option: it’s the last vestiges of sanity, when there’s nothing else: “And make him a martyr? That’s the worst option of all.”  
  
As weak as it is—he has to look away. It’s not Frost—it’s the prospect of anyone seeing enough of him to root out precisely how badly that topic unsettles him.  
  
“Doesn’t sound as though you’ve given it much thought,” Frost says.  
  
“I’ve given it consideration enough. And before you start strewing accusations, yes, there’s personal feeling involved. I don’t deny that. But I would have done it. I considered doing it, when Westchester first fell. It might even have worked at that point, when people still believed Erik was conquering the regions to get at a king he had no business being interested in. Since my status has become public knowledge, his actions will be perceived as far more justified. It won’t work anymore. Killing him would only give rise to more fighting.”  
  
Bloodthirsty as Frost is—but, is she, really, or is it simply a darker shade of pragmatism?—it’s not particularly surprising that Ororo is the one who reacts to that: as if jolted loose from a stupor, she lurches forward and, carried more by momentum than anything else, heads in the direction of a stout table topped with a pitcher. Grabbing a glass lying nearby, she fills it, heedless of the few drops that escape the glass and plunge to splatter on the floor, kicking up tiny spurts of dust. The ground is dry there: Frost must spend an irrational amount of time at that table—though, from the looks of it, that’s likely where she washes her face in the morning. Small wonder that it’s the most utilized part of the tent.  
  
Ororo gulps down the entirety of the glass and then sets it aside. “He’s right,” she says, fingers slipping off the sides of the table, leaving her hand to fall to her side. “I considered killing him. As Charles no doubt knows—“ She turns toward him, “I was the one who shot at him when he got off the train. But it wasn’t meant to be a killing shot, because I realized the same thing Charles has. That shot—it was only a reminder to everyone out there that dissent exists. _Active_ dissent. His arrival in Westchester was fully televised and broadcast to all the main squares in the regions. The world saw evidence that not everyone loves Lehnsherr.”  
  
Erik hadn’t said they’d been filmed when leaving the train. No real surprise there.  
  
“I _could_ have tried to kill him,” Ororo presses on. “But killing Lehnsherr wouldn’t put Charles in power. All it would do is create a vacuum of power: there would be a scramble for the throne.”  
  
Pragmatic may indeed be a better explanation of Frost: she doesn’t appear overly displeased at being denied the prospect of killing Erik, and while she does hold herself a bit more stiffly, she’s only drawing herself in, gathering for the next offensive. One plan has been discarded, and so the next must be addressed: “Then we go with our original plan. If you are able to mount a resistance staffed at the highest levels with those who owe you loyalty, you may be able to retain power after.”  
  
“And the fact that all of my officers are currently being held prisoner in Genosha?”  
  
“I think,” she says slowly, rolling the words on her tongue, “I may have a method of combating that.”  
  
Hopefully, not one that’s going to be a bloodbath. “Do share.”  
  
Though she casts him an acidic look in return for his tone, her attention draws more to Ororo, whose eye she catches momentarily before she stalks over to the table and pitcher herself and, grabbing the glass Ororo discarded, pours herself a drink of her own. Figures, that she doesn’t spill a drop. “I’m scheduled to return to Genosha at the turn of the week. It’s an informational visit that will require me to deliver intelligence, which will, in turn, require that I visit the palace.”  
  
If this ends in anything other than bloodshed, it will be a miracle. If she’s suggesting what it sounds like she’s suggesting… “That wouldn’t require you to visit the cells.”  
  
A grin slices through her frown. “You catch on quick, Honey. And it doesn’t matter what it _requires_. So long as I can get into the palace, I’ll get down to those cells unseen. Telepath, remember?”  
  
Yes, which means she should know better than anyone that telepathy isn’t a fix-all. “Shaw had a habit of outfitting his guards in the most vulnerable locations with telepathy-resistant headgear, and though Erik hasn’t explicitly mentioned it to me, I doubt that’s a practice he’s let fall by the wayside.” Not with a telepathic husband.  
  
If anything, that grin widens. “I do so seldom get the chance to use my secondary mutation. This promises to be something of a treat.” A treat she can’t wait for, apparently, since her image whitens and sharpens back out, completely crystalline. “I have it on good authority that it is _distinctly_ unpleasant, having diamond smashed into your face.”  
  
Doesn’t take much to figure that out. “I’ll bet.” And, unable to hold his emotion down altogether, he lets his eyes get in a one good roll: may as well make the most of it. “One more stipulation, then.”  
  
She crosses her arms over her chest with an especially put-upon sigh. “Fine, Xavier, what?”  
  
“You get me my son too.”  
  
“Oh, for the love of—“  
  
Off to the side, Ororo coughs. Thank gods. If Emma Frost had finished that sentence, they might have had occasion to find out whether or not diamond can be damaged when it’s living and breathing.  
  
“Do you really think Lehnsherr would harm him?” Ororo asks. There’s nothing in her voice to suggest she means to be patronizing: just an honest, tactical question.  
  
It still rankles. “No. But David is _my_ child, and Erik—I—“ He runs his tongue over his lower lip. How to phrase this? Hmm… “I know what he’s like, and I know that he believes things wholeheartedly. I don’t want my son in his care, experiencing the kind of beliefs that Erik holds.”  
  
“He’s not even a year old,” Emma snips. “He’s not going to remember any of it.”  
  
Maybe not. But the idea of having his son away from him for months at a time, possibly for upwards of a year, and not knowing, always worrying—no. Absolutely not. He’s selfish for it, despicable, maybe, to be willing to sacrifice so much at this altar—his cooperation, at the very least—but this is his _son_ , and he’ll be irrational if he damn well pleases.  
  
“You get me my son, Frost, or I won’t help you. That’s my stipulation. Take it or leave it.”  
  
“You refuse, and he’ll grow up raised by Lehnsherr anyway—“  
  
He’s tipping forward before he realizes it, eating up the ground between them, and—when did he get so close? They’re eye-level, scarcely a foot apart, and, like this, there’s no need to speak any louder than a hush. No need, but his voice is tingling with passion regardless, dropping the tone an octave: “You will get me my son,” he says quietly, very seriously. “Or I won’t help you.”  
  
No one says anything.  
  
Good. Silence means shock. Shock means he’s been heard.  
  
With any luck, that will progress to understanding.  
  
And, if not? Then he’ll do something else, find another way. There is no other way, not for him, but there doesn’t seem to be one for them either. Equally good odds, then. And, if they can’t reach an agreement, he’d like to think he has a better chance than they do at beating the impossible.  
  
Could be that she knows what he’s thinking. Or she might just be _that_ practical, to know when she’s gotten the best offer she can expect.  
  
Whatever it is, when she breaks and concedes, there’s no hiding it: her form fractures—a thousand, perhaps million, tiny hairline fractures—and she shudders back into her human flesh. “ _Fine_.”  
  
He takes a step back. “Good.” Though, Frost isn’t the only one present: “Ororo?”  
  
Ororo nods, solemn, far more collected than Frost. Gods only know how, after years with Shaw, she’s retained this snatch of humanity, of warmth, infused as it is with strength.  
  
Someday, he’ll ask her story. For now, though, there isn’t time.  
  
“Erik won’t be gone much longer, I expect.” The words burn coming up—not because it means Erik’s return, but—it’s unavoidable, what Frost has to do, in order to prepare for that return.  
  
She knows it too. “We’ll need something to trigger your memories. A trigger word worked this time, but in the future there won’t be anyone there to say it to you. We’ll have to trigger you with an event.”  
  
Which is substantially more difficult. “A great deal could go wrong. If the event doesn’t happen, if Erik hides it from me—“  
  
“We’ll need to pick a crucial event, then,” Ororo murmurs, cutting him off. “Something that, if it doesn’t happen, means this operation will never get off the ground.”  
  
Frost shrugs. “Simple enough. If those prisoners aren’t freed, then nothing goes ahead. We’ll hinge it on that.”  
  
“And if Erik doesn’t tell me?” Not likely, but always possible. It shouldn’t be discounted.  
  
“He wouldn’t be able to hide it for long. You’d hear it from someone. And, if you don’t, we’ll send someone in to tell you.”  
  
All right. That’s sound enough. “There’s still the matter of my timely escape.”  
  
“Would it really be so difficult? As far as I can tell, most of the hold he has on you at the moment comes from having your son in his care. He loses that hold….”  
  
Then he could run. He could _run_. Erik can’t watch him every moment of the day, and one negligent moment, one unlocked door—it would be enough. And Erik may not _try_ to watch him so closely—no more closely than now—if he’s under the impression that knowledge about David’s escape isn’t well-known. In his mind, surely he doesn’t actually need _David,_ but only the power to continue to convincingly _act_ as though he has him.  
  
If this conversation were triggered, Erik would lose that. Of course, if this conversation is triggered, then Erik could also pull the memory out and look at it—but Erik doesn’t rifle through his head on a daily basis, and a few days of ignorance would be all that was needed.  
  
That, then, is the sum of it: a few days, a handful of ignorance, and a mountain of lies. If that’s what it takes…  
  
“You’ll need to plant something to account for the time we’ve spent today.” Like suggesting someone poison him—the prospect of having ideas implanted is noxious—but this isn’t a position he can wiggle out of. This has to happen.  
  
“Something simple.” If simple could ever be Emma Frost in his mind—and the wrinkling of her nose, the slight distaste, smacks of how well she knows that. “I’ll coat it with an argument, something with Ororo present. I doubt Lehnsherr would doubt we argued. And I’ll leave the recollection of Lehnsherr’s memories, as I showed them to you. He certainly wouldn’t doubt we argued if he sees _that._ ”  
  
If Erik has any sense at all—and he does—he’ll have expected them to argue. “Fine.”  
  
“Now, then?”  
  
So much for wasting time. But, Ororo, who’s still standing by the table, is tense as well, and she keeps scanning the door, as if waiting for Erik to return and burst through it at any moment. It’s a valid concern.  
  
And… why delay? Like getting a shot, this won’t improve with anticipation. All he needs to do is tighten his shields—Erik won’t feel that tightening if it’s done quietly, if Erik isn’t looking, which one quick look confirms he isn’t—and loosen his others, the ones that keep people out of his head. Erik is different. Erik is _always_ different. His invasion comes from inside the mind, and, by nature, that is more complicated.  
  
Dropping his shields for Frost, on the other hand, is simple.  
  
Too simple. Unsettlingly simple.  
  
“All right,” he breaths out, closing his eyes and balling his hands up into fists, so violently that his nails bite his palm. Though, it’s some sort of sensation, and thus better than nothing, than the feeling of a defenseless mind. “Have at it.”  
  
The first push, a glide of mind on mind, and memories being swept under. This has to work, let this work—why is Frost in his head, where is he, what—?


	28. Chapter 28

“I’m pleased you and Frost didn’t initiate some sort of cataclysmic feud today.”  
  
Are they actually going to talk about this? Some things, Erik should know by now, are better left untouched, and a discussion of foisting your husband off to spend an hour making cut-glass insinuations and insults under the veil of polite conversation with someone who ripped his memories out is not a topic that Erik ought to be especially eager to examine—especially not when it was _Erik_ who motivated her to tear open those memories. Most of what he and Emma said isn’t anything Erik needs to hear about anyway: snide comments about his gender and returned derogatives about her willingness to change sides aside, they’d said a great deal of nothing.  
  
With a few notable exceptions.  
  
There are a few certain things that _do_ need to be addressed. Those memories of Shaw, of what he did to Erik….  
  
That doesn’t make the impending conversation any more enticing.  
  
Biting the edge of his lip—nervous habit, always hated catching himself at it—he plucks his marker up off the cushions of the sofa and slides it between the pages of his book. No more reading for the time being, if Erik’s rather unsubtle scrutiny—done from the corner of his eye, but no less detectable for it—is any indicator.  
  
Wordlessly, Erik finishes pouring—ah, two glasses of scotch, how nice of him. Does this mean he’s lifted his embargo on allowing alcohol to factor into their personal interactions? He’s been so very adamant that drunkenness play no role in their relations, after all, though it would be a pleasant change to find that’s suddenly an avenue of coping that’s now allowed.  
  
Though, one glass of scotch won’t do more than provide a tiny burst of relaxation—and only because dinner was hours ago. Surprising, actually, that Erik hasn’t ordered them off to bed.   
  
Finished with the scotch, Erik caps the decanter and curls his fingers—nice, capable hands—around the two glasses and turns away from the table to slip across the room and into the free space on the sofa next to Charles. Wordlessly, he hands Charles his drink before taking a sip of his own and then setting it aside on an end table.  
  
“Thank you.” There’s no need to be rude. Erik has gotten him a drink. Anyone with basic manners acknowledges that, unless in the midst of an argument—and they aren’t right now, are they? If they are, it’s an insidiously subtle one.  
  
That’s not to say one won’t start: it’s becoming increasingly likely, with the way Erik leans over and makes to kiss him on the cheek, though it ends up more in a sideburn due to Charles’ well-timed movement.  
  
Erik sighs, but he doesn’t comment.  
  
“You never answered my question,” he says, watching Charles take a sip. His eyes follow the motion, languidly, yes, but with undisguised interest. It doesn’t necessarily mean anything: Erik is like that with so many things, and, being one of those things— _the_ thing, to be honest—simply allows for prime observation of that intense scrutiny. Ironic, that.  
  
“I wasn’t aware that you asked a question.” What a treat, to have scotch again. It’s been only a few weeks, but he’s always been used to a glass before bed. Best to savor it now that he has it again: he sets it aside next to Erik’s on the table.  
  
Erik’s lips quirk. “Did you work anything out with Frost?”  
  
“There’s nothing _to_ work out. What she did, she did on _your_ orders.” When did lies stop tasting bitter on principle alone? A consideration for another time—not for when he’s essentially just tossed an accusation at Erik.  
  
Erik, true to form and habit, chooses to latch onto it and bat it about for a bit. “And you won’t forgive me for that?”  
  
“I don’t recall you asking for forgiveness. I _know_ you never told me you thought you were wrong.”  
  
“I’ve told you I was sorry for the necessity.”  
  
Had he? At some point, probably. It must have been dismissed as the useless attempt for justification that it is—and due to the weight that it fails to carry. “Everything is about necessity, isn’t it? Necessary to expose my secrets to the world, necessary to rip my memories back out into the open, necessary to threaten me in order to get me in bed, necessary to—”  
  
A finger works its way down his sideburn, dropping to trace the line of his jawbone. “I thought you’d feel better after talking with her. If I was wrong then I’m sorry, and I won’t put you in a position like that again in the future.”  
  
At the moment, Erik might believe that, but if the necessity arose—always what’s necessary—he would do so. Unless… Erik really has no reason to put him and Frost together again, now that confrontation has happened. Frost is in one piece, he is in one piece—but was that what Erik wanted?  
  
“Were you hoping I’d harm her?”  
  
“I thought I owed you the option.”  
  
“By that logic, you owe me the option to hurt _you_ too.”  
  
Erik grimaces, dropping the expression down into a scowl, although he looks away before much more than that becomes clear. Pity it doesn’t last: he turns back seconds later, closing the distance between them and draining out the tension in his limbs, scooting closer with a relaxed posture, as non-threatening and accommodating as possible under the circumstances. “You have more chance to hurt me than anyone else in the world does, Charles.” Leaning in closer, he brushes a knuckle down the side of Charles’ neck, sighing and dropping his head sideways until its rests against Charles’ hair. They mingle like that, brown and slightly red.  
  
Erik is no stranger to using affection to manipulate. Just because it’s also genuine doesn’t mean there isn’t a greater point to it. Turning it back on Erik is fair play, but it isn’t pleasant, though the warmth of Erik’s hand _is_. His hand is delightfully broad when Charles presses it open and runs the pads of his fingers down the insides of Erik’s own fingers. Even the calluses on Erik’s palms—courtesy of a swordplay—are comforting and, by this point, familiar. “Shaw hurt you.” Simple. Easy. No fancy words or lies. “Frost showed me.”  
  
What is not so easy is the way that Erik tenses: the fingers of the hand touching Charles’ face spread and curl around Charles’ neck. No choking yet, but Erik holds him in place lightly, pressing in with the middle knuckles of his fingers while his fingertips part contact with the skin and stretch out. “Frost showed you?”  
  
Reaching up, he knocks Erik’s hand aside. “Yes. The memory she saw in your mind. What Shaw made you do—“  
  
The hand that Charles is holding clenches and flips over, seizing Charles’ wrist.  
  
Truth is no reason to be manhandled, and Erik will _not_ be allowed to react like this. Not without consequences. “Anything, you said. Anything I wanted to know about your past. It shouldn’t matter that I found out.”  
  
“It _doesn’t_.” If it doesn’t matter, then Erik has no reason to grind his jaw quite so viciously, or to look away, reaching out for the glass of scotch and bringing it to his lips, downing it in one go. He grimaces at the taste, but his eyes jump to where the decanter rests, suggesting he’s already eager for more. “It matters that Frost talked. If she told _you_ —”  
  
“She said you’d say that.”  
  
A harsh laugh. “Oh? Are you throwing your lot in with Frost now?”  
  
That absolutely earns the disgust it draws out: he wrinkles his nose and shoves a bit at Erik’s shoulder, frowning. “Don’t be stupid. It isn’t Frost I’m concerned about.”  
  
“Concerned for my well-being, Charles?” Said bitterly, but… damn it, he has a point.  
  
That doesn’t make the statement any less true: “Of course I am. The things Shaw made you do—“  
  
“Did it make you feel good, seeing me on my knees?”  
  
That’s just insulting. “You ought to know by now,” he snaps, jerking away when Erik moves again to try to catch the side of his face in what might have been a caress, but could have just as easily been constricting, “that I don’t take much pleasure in anything Shaw did. Not to you, not to anyone. What he did to you was _wrong._ He hurt you.”  
  
“It’s how I realized, you know.”  
  
By freezing, surprised, Erik is able to catch him and flatten his palm out, curving it to Charles’ cheek and drawing his face back around. Erik’s hand is slightly clammy: perhaps the conversation isn’t leaving him as unaffected as he pretends. “Realized what?” he asks, slightly muffled by Erik’s touch.  
  
“That pretending to be what you aren’t wasn’t good for you.”  
  
No. That isn’t right. When he said _wrong_ , it wasn’t _that_ kind of wrong. Wrong, as in forced, as in an action that never should have taken place. This isn’t about biology—it’s about morality. And, even if it weren’t, the situations aren’t the same.  
  
It isn’t _anything_ like the same.  
  
He goes to pull away, but Erik catches him with a hand under his chin, gentle despite everything, and more patient now that the conversation has shifted back around to allow him control. Agitation always seems to give Erik the upper hand, and it’s no small wonder that he’s gotten so very, very good at finding ways to be unsettling.  
  
“The two situations are not remotely parallel. You’d been raised to be a guardian, and it was _Shaw_ who was trying to make you yield to him—and it isn’t even _about_ that. It was wrong because he _forced_ you—not because of some biological predetermination—“  
  
But Erik only shakes his head, blinking patiently and holding his hand steady. “No matter what, Charles, it felt wrong on the deepest level. I was born for a certain position in life—“  
  
“Like you were born to kill for Shaw. Is that it? Are we the sum of what we’re forced to be—?”  
  
The hand tightens, and Erik’s fingers slip higher and pinch at his cheeks. Twisting, Charles jams an elbow down into Erik’s gut, punching out a grunt and succeeding in dislodging Erik, but he’s caught again just as quickly, this time by Erik’s hand on his wrist. “Frost wanted you to tell me she showed you those memories, didn’t she?”  
  
It’s hardly even a question, but the answer will irritate Erik, and it’s worth responding on account of that alone. “Yes. The memories were scrambled, and she wouldn’t tell me under what circumstances she obtained them—“  
  
“No.” A slow, bitter smile. “She wouldn’t. Because she knows I’d have killed her if she had.”  
  
“Oh?” He tugs at his wrist, but Erik holds firm. It’s always the wrist with the mark, as though Erik is drawn to touching what he inked into flesh. That might very well be true.  
  
“She used you. You realize that, right?”  
  
“Like _you_ do constantly?” he snarls back.  
  
Leave to Erik to look honestly confused at such an accusation. “I’m not—you think I’m using you? Charles, I _love_ you. I wouldn’t—“  
  
“The two aren’t mutually exclusive.”   
  
Too true, unfortunately. Erik must know it too: he breathes out between his teeth and loosens his grip, stroking his thumb against the wrist captive in his grip. “All right. Fine. But I didn’t—“  
  
He tips his chin up, forcing Erik to meet his eye. Like this, they’re only a few inches apart. “So you didn’t hope that I’d deal with Frost for you?” Erik is silent. In way, that’s comforting: at least he doesn’t feel capable of outright lying. “You left me with her, hoping I’d—do what? Wipe her mind? You should know me better than that.”  
  
Erik doesn’t move. He may not even be blinking. “I wanted her to know that she’s no longer indispensible. You’re a stronger telepath than she is.”  
  
“But I am _not_ on your side.”  
  
“You _should_ be.”  
  
Squirming, he finally succeeds in tugging his wrist free from Erik’s grip. “I’m not. I won’t help you. If you want a pet telepath, you’d do better to stick with Frost, although I’ll concede that she does know some rather potentially damaging things about you.”  
  
“Those things she showed you—I’d have told you, if you asked.”  
  
“And how would I have _known_ to ask?”  
  
Erik shrugs, but the point obviously registers: he sighs and leans back into the sofa, dropping his head back against the cushions and closing his eyes. “You wouldn’t have. I know that. But this—it’s not something I believed you’d hold against me. I wasn’t hiding it from you. But that doesn’t mean I _wanted_ to talk about them. The things I did while serving Shaw were atrocious. I know that, and I didn’t want to revisit that. But I never worried that you’d blame me for them.”  
  
“I _don’t_ blame you for them.” There are plenty of things to blame Erik for, but what he did at Shaw’s behest are not crimes that ought to be laid at his feet. “But I _do_ blame you for setting me up to try to neutralize Frost for you.”  
  
“If it helps, I honestly thought it would help you to have the chance to confront her.”  
  
“I’m sure you _did_ believe that.” Motives don’t always have to be simple, and with Erik they so seldom are. “It doesn’t make it right. You _used_ me.”  
  
Erik grimaces. Good: apparently, he wasn’t thinking about things in quite those terms. Unknowing malice isn’t much better than pre-meditated ill-will when it comes to results, but it _is_ easier to bear.  
  
“If it helps, I’m sorry. My intention was not to hurt you.” At the very least, Erik knows better than to ask what he can do to make it up. It wouldn’t help if he did. “I’d like to ask your opinion on something, if you’re willing to listen.”  
  
So, this is what they do now, this misdirection and offer of tidbits to make up for the banquets that were snatched away. And, he, so far reduced that his mind is already clambering over the offer, has sized it up and begun imagining what it must be before Erik gets to the point of asking.  
  
The issue with Frost is by no means solved, but they won’t gain anything else by dancing around it, and if Erik is offering a misdirection, there must be a component to it that’s favorable—a peace offering, in a sense. For that alone, it’s worth listening. They can pick back upon the topic of Frost later.  
  
Charles nods.  
  
“Yes, then?” Erik asks, sliding an arm around the back of the sofa: close, very close, and, with one little shift forward, draped along Charles’ shoulders more than the sofa.  
  
He allows it. Both the touch, and the question. More, too, though what else he might be allowing isn’t defined yet; he reaches out and grasps his glass of scotch, taking a sip before again setting it aside and waiting.  
  
“The city,” Erik begins quietly, slipping his fingertips over Charles’ shoulder, tracing the cloth-covered curve, exerting only the barest pressure, but turning it into a caress nonetheless. “There’s talk that the city itself is about surrender. But, as useful as that is, it’s far less than what we need: the number of insurgents scattered about the county at large, moving about in bands—they practically flock to our supply lines, and it’s been a challenge to keep those lines from being cut. If they manage it, it won’t matter if we take the city: we won’t have the means to hold it.”  
  
That’s a trial that comes with the territory, as any Northern general has long been aware. The South is more consolidated, people tending to stick closer to the cities, whereas the North is spread out, family clans settling as they will. Those clans may be banding together now, uniting to fight. “That’s the North for you,” he agrees, very pointedly not looking at the touch to his shoulder. “There’s a reason I got away with a great many controversial laws: Shaw didn’t want to attack an area so problematic. Frankly, I’m surprised you haven’t had the same trouble from the Upper North.”  
  
Erik touch freezes and then resumes, but slower than before, and more forced. Not a good sign—and it’s depressingly simple to guess what it means. “You massacred it, then?” he says dully, staring at the opposite wall. That calls for another sip; it burns going down.  
  
There’s a pause… but Erik does eventually answer. “Not as such.”  
  
“What, then?”  
  
“They burned their own capital, rather than letting us take their resources. There’s nothing up there left to hold, really. I have soldiers at the remains of the city, keeping people from using the broken buildings or trying to rebuild, but, at this point, the survivors have mostly disappeared even further north, and, if they did stay close, they’re not much of a threat: they’re more concerned with survival than with mounting a resistance.”  
  
There will be no help coming from the North, then. He’d hoped—abstractly, yes, and with no real expectation, but it does hurt to have that hope dashed with such vigor. To burn their own city—well, it’s very Northern. That indomitable will, the belief that it’s far better to die free than to live a prisoner—burning the city isn’t, objectively, such a surprising turn of events.  
  
“And what opinion do you expect me to give?” he asks tiredly, and, because bothering to keep up refusing is too much effort, he drops his head back, resting it on Erik’s arm. The line of sinewy muscle ripples against his nape—Erik, tensing in understandable surprise, and, seconds later, relaxing—promising a strength that’s been plenty apparent in battle but that, when quiet like this, is unsettlingly comforting. “I’m—Erik, I’m very tired of death. And the fighting—it’s beyond me now, to picture it objectively, and I think it’s worn me down.”  
  
Lips brush his ear. “I know, _Schatz_.” That could be condescending, but… it doesn’t settle that way, and Charles finds himself leaning further back into Erik’s embrace, down into the pocket of his side. The pure, bone-deep exhaustion steals his resistance, and, for the moment, it takes too much work to recall why doing this allows Erik something he shouldn’t be given. “And I wanted to know what you think I should do if they surrender. We’re barely getting enough through on the supply lines as it is: we don’t have the capacity to feed prisoners, and we can hardly ship them all back down to Genosha. We could, I suppose, relocate them to other districts that aren’t as populated, but….”  
  
“That would destroy Westchester,” Charles finishes dully for him. “When is Raven arriving?”  
  
“She came today. I didn’t think you’d want to see her.”  
  
“Didn’t stop you from forcing the issue last time.”  
  
“You’d feel better if you made peace with her.”  
  
“Some things, Erik, can’t be let go. How would you feel if I told you to make peace with Shaw?”  
  
After seeing what Shaw did to Erik, it’s awful to even suggest that, but… it doesn’t make a point.  
  
A pause, in which Erik’s fingers depart from his shoulder and sneak higher to trace the shell of his ear, catching in the stray strands of hair that have fallen over it. “Raven isn’t evil, nor did she ever take pleasure in your pain.”  
  
Hadn’t she? Seeing Moira—seeing—all of what he’d seen—and— “She pinned a note to Moira’s shoulder, and she—“  
  
She killed Moira.  
  
She’d _killed_ Moira for no better reason than the fact that Moira wasn’t a mutant. There’s never been any evidence that it was difficult for Raven to do so, and that may be the most frightening part of all: how had he raised a woman who could kill so effortlessly?  
  
It’s unthinkable.  
  
Right, and… when had he started gasping? Say something, explain—but the words won’t come out right. He twists, arching his back, trying to flop sideways to get a better look at Erik’s face, and Erik lets him, though only far enough for him to turn, before Erik’s hold returns and forces his hips back down, shoving his body over Erik’s lap: he lands sideways, his right hip in Erik’s lap and his abdomen pressed to Erik’s while his shoulder jams down into the pillow on the side of the sofa. Erik gets his arm—the opposite of the one that had been cushioning Charles before—under Charles’ head, stopping his descent, while the other curls around his waist, holding him fiercely against Erik’s front and crushing his arms between his and Erik’s chests, with Erik’s arm preventing him from pushing up and wriggling free. The only part of him able to make any real protest is his legs, stretched out as they are on the sofa, but with his upper body pinned down, the most they can do is kick at the back of the sofa repeatedly.  
  
“Yes,” Erik says quietly, “I know.” The hand attached to the arm under Charles’ head moves into his hair, burying deep down to the scalp and pressing lines from front to back, carding through hair as one might plow a row to ready it for planting. It’s more soothing than it should be, and he quiets, despite not having yet hit the point of actual exhaustion. “I… haven’t been much good about letting you mourn. Call it selfish—it is, I know—but I didn’t want to hear about it—about _her_ —and I didn’t think about how much you might have needed to say it. I’m sorry.”  
  
“It took days—just wasting away—she didn’t know me, not at the end—“  
  
Fingers keep drifting through his hair, riding out his shudders—though, he’s not fighting anymore: only lying dully against Erik’s arm, staring off somewhere over Erik’s shoulder.  
  
She’d been so pale, there at the end. Her eyes had glossed over, and her cheeks had sunken, and, in the hours before she died, she’d stared at him without seeing him, looking straight through him instead, occasionally slurring out bits of syllables, or, at random, pained moans. When it had been all but over, he’d collapsed down on the bed with her, curling an arm over her middle and tucking his face into her neck: when she’d finally gone, he’d felt her pulse slowing against his forehead, tapering out, stopping….  
  
There’s no real beginning to when he starts crying. He only catches himself in the middle of it, with tears already on his cheeks, and the sharp punch of sobs knocking the air out of his lungs. This is a thousand kinds of wrong, to be crying for his wife in front of his husband—into the arm of someone who hated her—but there’s never been a moment to spare since she died, and, had there been time, there would have been no one to hold him.  
  
Whatever else Erik may be, he _is_ that: someone for whom there was never any demand to be strong for, but only strong _with_ , and, sometimes, that means picking each other up. That may have been truer before Shaw’s death, but some of it lingers, and it’s the best he’ll get.  
  
“My own _sister_ —“  
  
Two hitched breaths, and then a little keening cry; he kicks the couch again, not for escape this time, but out of anger, and sheer frustration, and he hates, he hates, he hates, _kick, kick, kick_ —  
  
“Erik…” Almost pleading, and, gods, his voice is awful, pathetic.  
  
“Here, Darling.” The hand over his waist squeezes.  
  
Darling. So at ease, so comfortable, but—it sounds like a treasure crystallized into words, and it could be that’s precisely what Erik means by it: that word would never be on Erik’s lips for anyone else, save maybe for a child of his own. The word is _not_ Erik, is not characteristic of a man who, to the world, is hard, angry, and bitterly cold. If Erik were to fake affection in line with what the world sees of him, it would be formal—no kind of affection at all—not this closeness, and the familiarity of rounded vowels in pet names.  
  
“I raised her, took care of her, and—what did I do wrong?”  
  
“Nothing that was enough to deserve what you got.” Not _nothing_ , because Erik isn’t accustomed to lying so easily. “And I think she knows that now. But she’s angry, Charles, more at humans than at you, but, just the same: angry. For you to support the people who feared her, to marry one of them—“  
  
“She didn’t—Moira didn’t—“  
  
“Moira may not have hated her. But Moira was human. And Moira botched that transmission and nearly got you killed. In Raven’s mind, Moira tried to take away the things that meant the most to her: you, freedom for herself and other mutants, Westchester….”  
  
“Does Raven hate my son, then?” he snarls out through tears. One of them, dislodged by the movement of his face, slides down, catching in the grove by his mouth and slipping down past his lips. It tastes like the breakers at the seashore, briny and bitter.  
  
“David is a mutant. That would be like hating mutants for having human parents.”  
  
“I meant because he’s _Moira’s_.”  
  
Erik stiffens, but the comment passes by without sparking a fight. “He’s _yours,_ Charles. And now he’s mine as well. She has no cause to hate him.”  
  
It doesn’t matter, when under no circumstances will Raven be allowed access to David. But, access or not, she now owns the region of Westchester, and that will be enough to make her influence felt. David will grow up knowing he’s succeeding her, rather than his father, and, if Erik has any say in it, the furthest thing from David’s mind will be thoughts of his murdered mother.  
  
“Moira never did anything to you.” Just lashing out, latching onto any hurt that’s drifting through his mind, tossing it out and hoping it trips Erik up—but nothing does, and Erik lets him keep on with the string of accusations. “But you still hate her.”  
  
“The idea of her touching you, Charles—I’d hate anyone who’d done that.”  
  
“That’s not _fair_.”  
  
“No,” he snaps back, and, for the first time in the last few minutes, a flare of anger enters his tone, “what’s not fair is that I had to stew in my own resentment for three years while the man with whom I’d sparked a bond ran off and married someone else, had a child with her, _loved_ her, when it should have been _me_.” His fingers twitch, pulling back away from the scalp, gripping a fist of hair and pulling, not to hurt, but like stretching a muscle—a tug that feels good. But maybe a warning too, just a little. “Do you know what that feels like?”  
  
He squirms, trying to turn in Erik’s lap, only for the arm looped around him to squeeze tighter and curtail his motion.  
  
“I worried for you constantly,” Erik tells him, leaning in closer and—Charles jerks, cheeks twitching, almost flinching—kisses the tears off his face, dragging his lips— slightly chapped—over the skin. “After seeing you nearly killed…” He breathes out, motionless for the count of a few seconds before pressing onward. “You can’t possibly imagine—“  
  
“Then _show_ me.” Hello, anger, old friend. How quick it always flares back up, flip-flopping between tears and rage. “You talk about it often enough, and I’m hardly in the position to forget it, but—“  
  
But Erik isn’t done—or it may be he simply isn’t inclined to let that sentence finish. “I’m beginning to think you don’t understand something unless you can see it,” he says, pulling back and sinking down a little further into the cushions, scooting closer to the arm of the sofa and rolling Charles with him until his hips slip off Erik’s and onto the cushions, leaving him on his back in Erik’s lap. “I wonder if you really can sympathize at all, or if it has to come in the form of indirect empathy: if you haven’t experienced something vicariously by seeing it in some form or another within a person’s mind at some point in your life, I’m not sure you know how to think through it in the abstract. Some of us, Charles, have to simply _imagine_ what others are feeling, you know.”  
  
No, that’s not—but what if it is? When cut off from a person’s mind, he’s already found that he struggles to read body language, to _know_ … Raven had been like that. He’d promised never to read her, and when he’d stopped, he hadn’t really _understood_ her, hadn’t known what to do for her or how to give her what she needed. _Are_ those mental aids his lifeblood?  
  
As close as Erik is to the arm of the sofa, it’s a matter of a quick tug to slip a pillow down under Charles’ head and to withdraw his arm, freeing it up, though the other rests easily on Charles’ hip, giving away via its light pressure that Erik is physically anticipating another attempt that might be made at escape.  
  
Scrunching his face up in confusion is by no means the most dignified response he could offer to Erik’s accusation, but it’s so difficult to think when that idea is tossed out at a time like this, when his nose is clogged from crying and his eyes are burning, his lungs raw from sobs and his limbs shaky with exhaustion.  
  
And he must look a sight, because Erik’s expression softens and he reaches over, molding his palm to Charles’ cheek and sweeping his thumb up and down the sideburn just above the skin that he’s covered. “That isn’t _no_ : I promised you I’d always tell you anything personal about myself, and if you want to know what I felt when Shaw hurt you, I’ll give that to you. But I want you to be sure that’s something you think should be in your head. Seeing yourself injured is, I’d imagine, unpleasant.”  
  
Reaching up, he curls his hand around Erik’s wrist, not to stop his motions, but to anchor himself. Though, Erik should never be an anchor, and when did he become one? “I’ve been in war—“  
  
“Yes. But seeing _yourself_ injured is different. Can you tell me you’ve never had nightmares about that day?” He could, but he’d be lying, and, at the moment, that possibility rears up like a dust storm, threatening to dirty him completely. No, no lies. “It might not be good—“  
  
“I want to know.”  
  
Erik’s breath hitches, stuttering, and then starts up again, forcibly calm. “If it’s what you want.” But he sounds resigned, and his thumb pauses, bends forward—digs the nail in against the neatly trimmed hair. “Drop your shields.”  
  
Once, he’d been able to pull them down at will, but these days they protest worse than an old rusty gate: though, not out of disuse, but primarily the fear of what will happen when he lets them down. Already he’s begun holding his breath, going rigid on Erik’s lap, and staring up at him, waiting, waiting….  
  
The waiting doesn’t last long. The instant his shields are down, Erik is pressing forward: he must have been waiting just on the other side, ready to surge forward at an invitation, and, quite possibly, without one, if it had come to that.  
  
One second there’s nothing, and the next Erik’s mind is mingling with his, pushing, expanding—and it’s all another day, something else from the here and now—  
  
 _/Shaw doesn’t look overly changed from the last time Erik saw him, all those years ago. Different, yes, with a new cut to his clothes, and wearing that absurd helmet, but he hasn’t aged a bit. As far as mutations go, repurposing energy is a pretty good one: capability of destruction and perpetual youth, all in one go. But Shaw’s always been a lucky bastard._  
  
 _Lucky, yes: Genosha has fallen, and, somehow, Shaw managed to sneak his way out of the city, escape to the edges of civilization—and it cannot be chance that he went to ground near where Erik’s family had lived. A sacked capital and empty rooms; a vicious attempt to throw Erik off his game, with no regard whatsoever for Charles; and, finally, this moment, when they’ve cornered Shaw._  
  
 _“Erik.”_  
  
 _Charles. He should have stayed home, where it was safe, where there was no chance of Shaw sinking him claws into anything Erik loves ever again. But here Charles is, breathing hard at his right elbow, Erik’s name rolling off his lips in an attempt to reassure and provide solidarity, because that’s simply who Charles is._  
  
 _Charles is too soft for this kind of work, and thank the gods for it. If Charles were anything else, he wouldn’t be_ Charles _._  
  
 _For a man who’s been chased down at last, Shaw isn’t exactly radiating worry. He should be: cut off from his troops like this, and pressed up against a slopping wall of rock, he_ really _ought to be more concerned than he is. Piss poor tactics, too, and overconfidence, that’s what this is: what kind of fool doesn’t scout the area better than this? Running for the high ground is all well and good—makes for a damn good shot down at a target, if that target weren’t a_ metal bender _—but to not know this area—the foothills, for godsake, what did he_ think _that meant?—is just pure overconfidence. Any man who had any reason to believe he’d need to run would have planned an escape route._  
  
 _But, then, Shaw has never paid much attention to anything to do with the area where Erik grew up—too mountainous for Shaw to do much with it, and, thus, in his mind, useless—so why start considering it now?_  
  
 _“You know, Erik,” Shaw says, sounding almost put out, as if this whole matter is Erik’s fault. “If you’d simply remained with me, I would have been more than happy to eventually give you a place within my government, once you were ready. You didn’t need to go to all this trouble to gain a little power.”_  
  
 _As if that’s what this was ever about. Power? No. Power won’t bring his mother back. Power won’t repair the damage Shaw has done to the world. Before Shaw, there was something else, and while knowledge of that before is officially forbidden, it’s well known that the storms were caused by Shaw. The how of it doesn’t matter: it’s irrelevant exactly how he did it. If not for him, the before would still be the now._  
  
 _“It’s not too late,” Shaw tells him almost idly, hand resting on the pommel of his sword. It’s still sheathed, but Shaw doesn’t really need it to do damage. It’s not much more than a pretty decoration—or a piece that he enjoys, since there’s evidence that he delights in running enemies through rather than killing them with his redirected energy. Probably something to do with watching the blood spurt and gush. Whatever it is, he knows of Erik’s mutation and might not intend to use the sword at all. No gun, anyway, which is something. “Join me. The alternative…” He tuts disapprovingly. “It won’t be to your liking.”_  
  
 _No, but not much that Shaw does_ is _._  
  
 _That includes Shaw’s current preoccupation: with a slowness akin to creeping death, he grins, dragging his gaze away from Erik and slowly, so slowly, fixing it on Charles. His mouth twitches, pinching up the muscles in his cheeks: sharp and dangerous in nearly everything, bone structure included, right to the end._  
  
 _No. Of all the things that can be sacrificed, that could feasibly be lost, and that Erik would give up to gain this victory—Charles may be the only thing that is none of those, and which must be kept safe at all costs._  
  
 _But Charles has never thought that way, definitely never understood how much he’s worth, and he meets Shaw’s gaze head on, holding his stare with one of his own. Those rounded blue eyes may as well broadcast his thoughts, and it’s no surprise when Shaw chuckles, sizing Charles up, plucking the measure of him seemingly out of thin air—not that it’s difficult. A good man, Shaw will note. Not a pushover. But kind, cares for others, and is thus subject to manipulation._  
  
 _There’s more to see there, but it’s unthinkable that Shaw might latch onto it._  
  
 _Naturally, he does exactly that._  
  
 _What a joke, to think that luck would be on their side. This is the man who made Erik’s life Hell, who took everything and shattered it in front of him, who tortured him, and whose influence he has never been able to totally outrun. Any victory he gains against Shaw, he’ll earn it: luck won’t hand it to him._  
  
 _Luck has never handed him much._  
  
 _“Charles Xavier,” Shaw drawls, twinning his hands together behind his back and stretching his spine to full height. He didn’t need the extra height to look down on Charles, but it’s very like him to take it regardless. “Is this what you’ve been reduced to allying with, Erik? Someone who would see us all on even footing? Or do you like it, the idea of humans and mutants mingling together, chaff mixed with treasure? And bearers, doing as they like.” He snorts. “Absurd. Is this what you are now? Someone so soft that you’d roll over for humans and bearers alike? Pity: I taught you better.”_  
  
 _This has always been the problem: in some ways, he and Shaw aren’t so far apart, and this—it’s ridiculous and disgusting, to think that, to some degree they agree on this, but there it is. The truth isn’t always kind. Sometimes, men like Shaw are right. Not completely, but in things like this, in recognizing that there’s a natural order to things, and Shaw has, in some respects, found it. Mutants_ should _be superior to humans, and bearers aren’t meant to be autonomous—dropping population problems makes that more than clear—but genocide isn’t the answer. Humans produce mutants: killing them off, as Shaw has done in the past, only hurts mutants further. And turning bearers into some kind of glorified sex slaves? There’s no reason for it. Charles isn’t right to treat them exactly as one would a provider—his interaction with Moira is mindboggling—but they’re no less intelligent than their other halves: only made to serve a different function. It doesn’t make them less important, just different._  
  
 _But to say that he’d roll over for humans and bearers alike? It’s not accurate, and… gods damn it, he swore to himself he could do this, could face Shaw without being riled. Rage_ and _serenity._  
  
[Erik. You know he’s baiting you. Don’t let him.]  
  
 _Charles’ voice snaps, crystal clear, in the center of his mind. Since last night, since that kiss, Charles’ telepathy has been…_ more _, somehow. It doesn’t—it—it doesn’t make sense. Not at all. Two providers kissing, it shouldn’t have done anything, and it could be only that Charles has made himself a little more at home, but… it feels different._  
  
 _And now is definitely not the time to think on that._  
  
 _“You, Xavier, have been a burden to me for years,” Shaw informs Charles, irritation clouding his words. “A clever burden, yes, but I can’t say I’ll be sorry to see you vacate your kingship. All those_ ideas _of yours….” He shakes his head and takes a step forward in Charles’ direction._  
  
 _Erik is moving forward before Charles says anything at all, and it’s not a tactically sound choice, not by any means—puts him too close to Shaw—but this is_ Charles _, and he’ll take a sword to the gut before letting Charles come to harm._  
  
 _There are so few good things left in this world. To destroy one of them, to let Shaw have that one thing, that man, that perfect man that is his friend and his—he’s… he’s in love with Charles, as impossible as it is, but all that means, right now, is that Charles_ must be protected.  
  
 _“_ Erik _,” Shaw drawls, pulling up short at Erik’s sudden movement. His face splits into a grin, devolving quickly into a leer as he looks back and forth between Erik and Charles. “I had no idea you had such proclivities. Really, Son, that’s the height of impossible in today’s world.” But he can’t be completely convinced of that, since he pauses, tapping a finger against the pommel of his sword. “But… if you were to join me, I suppose I might be persuaded to turn a blind eye. He’d be a prisoner, after all, not in a position to take a bearer and father children: someone might as well get use out of him.” He laughs, eyeing what he can see of Charles’ over Erik’s shoulder. “Yes. You join me, Erik, and I’ll let your friend live. I’ll even give him to you, let you do as you like, in exchange for your loyalty. Think about it: you won’t get such an offer from society.”_  
  
 _No, he won’t. And that’s probably why his fingers have gone numb and his head has started to pound in protest at the sheer number of thoughts racing through his mind. Charles, in his care. Charles, safe, tucked away from the world—and it won’t be that way if they end this war and Charles returns to ruling, whether it be in Westchester or in Genosha. He’ll be in the line of fire—and also in the public eye. Two providers together—they will make it work, because they have to—Charles will come around soon enough, help him think something up—but if Charles could be_ his _…._  
  
 _It would never work. Charles isn’t a bearer. To treat a guardian like a bearer would be as great an offense as to treat a bearer like a guardian. A person’s sex is what it is for a reason. And what Shaw is offering would be no better than putting Charles in a gilded cage for the rest of his life with nothing for that brilliant mind of his to do. Charles wasn’t meant to lounge the days away in silks and satins—as beautiful as he’d look draped in them—but to_ fix _things, to think out the matters that others can’t, and to make this world better. He couldn’t do that, if he was relegated to nothing more than a thing for Erik’s pleasure._  
  
 _As satisfying as it would be to have Charles as his own, his to care for completely, a life where Charles isn’t allowed to use his mind—that’s never something Erik could want for him._  
  
 _“No.”_  
  
 _No, he won’t do that to Charles. No, he won’t join Shaw._  
  
 _And,_ yes, _Shaw has far outstayed his welcome in this world._  
  
 _Digging his fingers down into the pocket of his trousers where the coin is nestled, Erik widens his stance, eyes on Shaw, waiting._  
  
 _Shaw shrugs. “Pity. You and I, Son, we could do great things.”_  
  
 _The sensation is flowing back into his fingers now, thankfully, though they tingle something awful. “I plan to do great things all on my own.”_  
  
 _The only great things Shaw ever did were, by equal measure, terrible. His mother’s face, slack, jaw open, a trickle of blood leaking out of her mouth. He’d had to carry her away, throw her down into the grave himself, and when he hadn’t, when he’d clung to her at the edge of that pit, the guards had tossed them both in, and Erik had landed among the bodies, and he’d screamed and screamed, and then, once he’d climbed out and had been dragged back to Shaw, he’d woken screaming every night after that for weeks._  
  
[Erik--]  
  
 _Never again._  
  
 _He lunges forward, slapping away Charles’ hand when it darts out to try to catch him, closing on nothing but air. He’s treated to one good eyeful of Shaw’s widening grin before he’s caught by light touch of fingers—is that really all it takes?—on his shoulder and flipped sideways, through the air…_  
  
 _He slams into the rock face, back to the solid surface, and, for the moment, he could swear all his bones have shattered, cracked where the juts and uneven places in the rock catch him. The pain radiates, vibrating through him and out his limbs, half from Shaw’s energy and half from the impact, and by the time he lands in a heap on the earth, the collision with the ground is nothing in comparison._  
  
 _He’s dead. With Shaw behind him—when one good kick will snap his spine. No, though, Shaw will want to play, toy with him before the kill. And Charles—_  
  
 _Shit,_ Charles.  
  
 _“I won’t waste time making you an offer, Xavier. Erik and I, we don’t see things so differently, when it comes right down to it. That’s not the case with you and me. Too bad, with all the talent you have, but I’m afraid you’re no good to me.”_  
  
 _Rolling over feels like someone is shoving blunted poles of metal up into his bones. It’s fading, though, thankfully, and he’s able to flop over, to turn his head to see that Shaw has advanced, toe-to-toe now with Charles, who, to his credit, is holding Shaw’s eye with such coolness that Erik could almost laugh. Hundreds of years, and Shaw can probably count on his hands how many men have been willing to do that._  
  
 _Shaw must be thinking the same: he laughs, shaking his head, though that’s hard to make out with the helmet on. Still, not impossible, and Erik pushes to his knees, using the ridiculous headpiece as a beacon on which to fix his sights, to draw him upward. The metal in it isn’t magnetic—later, if there’s a later, he’ll need to find what it’s made of—and he can’t grab it, but—_  
  
 _But the swords are metal. Shaw will notice if Erik touches his sword, but Charles—he can reach_ Charles _—_  
  
[Put your hand on the hilt of your sword. Cover the pommel too] _he thinks as loudly as he can in Charles’ direction._  
  
 _Charles, to his credit, gives no outward sign he’s heard anything, despite the soft pulse of agreement that he sends back in Erik’s direction. Better still, he doesn’t flick his gaze toward Erik and thereby give away the fact that Erik isn’t, as Shaw must surely think, unconscious. How can Charles be so rational, that close to Shaw? Seconds from now, he could be dead—no. That isn’t an acceptable option. But_ Charles _must think it’s imminent: how can he possibly be this collected?_  
  
 _Shaw laughs in delight when he sees Charles’ hand cover the hilt of the sword. “Going to try to stab me?” Evidently that hasn’t happened recently enough for Shaw to have sated his love for direct bloodshed, the kind done personally at his hand. Only a sick man would see an attack as a sort of treat, but, well, sick_ does _encapsulate Shaw’s being nicely._  
  
 _Even when the metal under his palm begins moving, Charles shows nothing, though he’s not digging into Erik’s mind deeply enough to have seen his plan. He likely can’t, when he’s so focused on the man in front of him: it’s a wonder he’s capable of communicating telepathically at all when faced with such a distraction. Impending death—or what could be—and he’s talking into Erik’s mind._  
  
 _Amazing. Charles could take over the world if he wanted, and humanity at large would give nary a whimper. They’d never know what hit them, and Charles would be enthroned before they ever thought to fight back._  
  
 _“If it’s a sword match you want, little telepath, I do suppose I could grant you that.” Shaw reaches for his own weapon, mirroring Charles’ pose. Charles doesn’t draw; neither does Shaw, and they remain locked in a staring contest, Charles intent, and Shaw amused, his own hand copying each of Charles’ smallest movements of his palm on the hilt._  
  
 _Or, what_ was _Charles’ touch to the hilt. Charles had flattened his palm out, pressing it against the pummel as though he were about to curl his fingers down around it, but simply hadn’t decided to do it yet. It is, without a doubt, the best way to block the most amount of metal from Shaw’s view. Now, at this point, if Charles were to curl his fingers down, he’d be grasping air rather than metal: the movement in his hands that Shaw is mocking isn’t a wavering grip, but the result of Charles’ hand losing its support when Erik liquefies the metal. Taking care to keep it in a stream thin enough to hide behind Charles’ arm, he works it up behind Charles’ back, up past his neck, finally to hide it behind Charles’ head… nearly on an equal level with Shaw’s head. There he curves it, making a hook of it: if he can notch it onto the lip of Shaw’s helmet and pull it off, Charles can do the rest._  
  
[I’m going for his helmet] _he thinks toward Charles_ [in three, two, one--]  
  
 _Pulling the metal toward himself with every bit of force that he possesses, he snags the hook on the curve of Shaw’s helmet, just above his left eye, and_ yanks _._  
  
 _For an artifact able to block so much power, it comes off remarkably easily. Like a lady’s hat in the breeze—and Shaw plays the part delightfully, scrambling after it, though drawing his sword at the same—and reaching—no, no,_ no _—_  
  
 _Shaw realizes within half a second that he can’t catch the helmet. Half a second more, and Charles might have been able to get a lock on him. But Shaw—at the core, he’s cruel, or, worse, just dead, caring nothing for anything beyond his own goals. Someone thwarts him? His ingrained reaction is to cause harm to that person._  
  
 _“No--!”_  
  
 _But no bitten off cries are going to do any good when Shaw slams his shoulder into Charles, knocking him off-balance and sending him sprawling to the ground. Shaw follows through with the draw of his sword, lunging after Charles, who’s rolling, turning himself over—and seeing Shaw’s blow too late to do anything about it, beyond crying out and jerking, only a few inches to the side._  
  
 _Nothing is fast enough. Charles gets his claws into Shaw’s mind, but it’s too late to stop the swing of the sword, and the motion carries through, slicing down into his side and thigh._  
  
 _Charles screams._  
  
 _Blood. Blood everywhere. And Charles—his cry stretches out, and Erik is already tottering toward him on unsteady feet of his own. And Charles, Charles—_ “Charles—“  
  
 _Charles, who, despite the pain, is holding Shaw still. Shaw stands like a mannequin, unmoving, unblinking. The inertia has toppled his body forward, bending it in half and leaning his weight on the sword, which has stuck into the ground, carried by the follow-through from the blow._  
  
 _It would easy to end him, to tug that sword out of the dirt and skewer him. It would be_ too _easy, and far more than he deserves. Because what he deserves? Is to_ suffer.  
  
 _The coin is out of Erik’s hand, drifting toward Shaw, even as Erik frantically presses down against Charles’ thigh, applying pressure. Shaw hurt Charles. Charles could die._  
  
 _“Er—ik—“ Weak, but there—though Erik can’t take the time to notice, with the coin inches from Shaw’s forehead, closer, closer…._  
  
 _What—what was—? His mind, there’s something brushing there, begging wordlessly, but he shoves it aside and rams the coin into Shaw’s skull._  
  
 _Shaw can’t make a sound. But he doesn’t need to: Charles does it for him, howling out in pain, and Erik turns back toward him despite himself, pushing harder on his thigh. It leaves the coin lodged in Shaw’s head, and Charles is crying and crying…._  
  
 _“Erik, Erik—finish it—the coin—“ His words are choked and brittle, coated in blood—it’s only bitten lips, he’s not coughing it, please, please—and it’s a wonder he can get the words out at all. “Finish—“_  
  
 _And he does. He drags the coin the rest of the way through Shaw’s skull, raking over brain matter and nerves, lighting his own nerves with the mess of flesh flowing over the metal._  
  
 _Charles’ scream bites off directly as the coin bursts out of Shaw’s skull, its dead weight dropping to the earth, discarded, forgotten. He can gloat later, rejoice in Shaw’s death, but for now—_ now _, Charles is slumping to the side, collapsing into the dirt._  
  
 _“Charles. Fuck,_ Charles, _oh, gods, look at me,_ look at me—“  
  
 _And he does, spitting out tiny whimpers of pain in between pants of breath. His eyes are unfocused, glazed, but it’s the blood, streaming out of his thigh. Not gushing. Not gushing is good, it’s not an artery if it’s not gushing. No, an artery would spurt. They always have when Erik has slit them open. Messy, those arteries._  
  
 _“Medic!” he screams, forcing his hands down over the wound with more force than before—gods only know how that’s possible—and applying pressure, regardless of Charles’ wail. The troops should be just over the rise, waiting, as directed. “Help!” And he keeps on screaming until he hears noise, until there’s a clatter of footsteps._  
  
 _He has never been so happy to see a medic in his life./_  
  
“Erik—Erik—“  
  
“Shhh, here, Charles, right here.”  
  
The voice is soft, calming, nothing like those shouts, save that the noise comes from above him. But the smoothness of it slips through the red haze over his vision, brushing it away, and with each hard-fought for second the haze clears, and Charles is left staring upward, into Erik’s face.  
  
“Right here,” Erik murmurs again, this time tucking a lock of Charles’ hair behind his ear. He smiles tiredly. “All right now?”  
  
Yes, yes of course he is, and there’s no reason to reach down toward his leg, just to check… Erik presumably realizes what he’s doing and makes no attempt to cut off his exploration, allowing Charles’ hand to slide out from against their chests—at some point during the memory he’s turned back over to press against Erik—and down until he can touch along the inside of his thigh, where the wound was. No blood. Nothing but the sturdy fabric of his uniform trousers, which he’s elected to keep on wearing, though he shed the button-up top in favor of the white cotton undershirt hours ago.  
  
“Yes,” he breathes out, weak as anything, but audible. “I… I’d forgotten, I think….”  
  
“Drink this.”  
  
A glass is held to his mouth, and he sips trustingly, content to lean his head back against Erik’s arm and enjoy… the scotch from earlier, it would seem. He’d set it aside, but Erik has executed a rather fantastic bit of good timing and brought it back.  
  
“Thank you,” he says once he’s swallowed, swallowed again, and had his fill.  
  
Erik sets the glass aside. “Better?”  
  
“With alcohol? Always.”  
  
Erik chuckles. “You must be better. You’re joking.”  
  
So he is. It comes naturally, similar to dropping his hand from his own thigh and curling in toward Erik, accepting the hand that spans his waist, and closing his eyes, if only for a moment, just to breathe.  
  
He needs that moment. Gathering himself is… not so easy, as it might be, as it should be.  
  
“Do you understand now,” Erik asks from above him, “why I worry?” The laughter is gone from his voice, replaced with solemnity—the kind that Charles has seldom heard in any other context besides when Erik is addressing Charles’ own wellbeing.  
  
“It was war, Erik.” But the effect is lost, spoken as it is nearly into Erik’s arm. “That’s what happens.”  
  
“Yes. Which is why you’ll never again take to the battlefield.”  
  
“And it’s fair that others should have to do it in my place? Everyone is someone’s child, you know, and a good many are someone’s spouse: you aren’t the only person in the world to watch a loved one go to war.”  
  
Erik’s hand twitches on his hip, digging down into the skin. He holds the handful of flesh, not pinching, but keeping Charles where he is: despite the fact that the grip is at his waist, it’s dreadfully reminiscent of a cat holding its kitten by the scruff.  
  
“No,” Erik agrees, almost blandly. “I’m not the only person who watched a love one go to war: but I _am_ someone who’s in a position to stop it from ever happening again—and that’s a power I’ll damn well use, Charles.”  
  
“That isn’t fair—“  
  
Erik’s grip tightens—too much, this time, and Charles grunts, glaring up at him, which does the trick: Erik releases him with the quickness of someone who hadn’t realized he was doing damage, and immediately sets to pressing down over the area with the flat of his palm and rubbing it apologetically to ease the ache. “To hell with fair,” he snaps, not drawing back but merely turning his rubbing to a lighter touch, more along the lines of petting. “If that’s the best argument you have, you’d do better to not argue at all.”  
  
“A argument isn’t inherently deficient solely on the grounds that you disagree with it, Erik!”  
  
But it _is_ very like Erik to believe that. Or, not _believe_ , precisely, so much as refuse to recognize anything else: it’s not an operation of logic, but of will. They’re approaching each other from vastly different places, and if Erik doesn’t care to use standard logic to work this out, then being in the right hardly matters at all: an argument could be flawless, but if Erik refuses to play by the rules of logic, that argument might as well not be voiced in the first place.  
  
“I’d have thought,” Erik murmurs, knocking his foot against the base of the sofa, “that you’d be tired of this by now.” Not as tired as Erik is acting: if he screamed his ambivalence toward Charles’ logic, he couldn’t be any louder than he’s being at the moment: it speaks volumes, this relaxation that infuses the languid motion of his fingers and hand as he pets up and down Charles’ side. “You can continue to play by the rules of your own moral logic and get nowhere, or you can offer me an argument formed from _my_ viewpoint. Convince me of why I’m wrong, Charles, if you want to change my mind.”  
  
Wiggling under Erik’s touch, he shoves out and plants a hand on Erik’s stomach, taking the bit of leverage that balance gives him. “Are you asking me to beat you at your own game?”  
  
 Erik laughs. “You’re brilliant at outthinking an enemy on the battlefield: and you do it by understanding their tactics, right?”  
  
“Only partly. I understand their tactics, but I beat them using my _own_.”  
  
“A flawed analogy, then. My apologies.” Reaching out, he chucks Charles under the chin, grinning. As frightening as that smile can be, when Erik is genuinely pleased—genuinely amused, as he is now—it’s a sight to behold, pulling Charles toward it with the same tenacity as the gravity that holds him down. The loose good-nature of Erik’s affection dissolves the tension usually present in his mouth, practically begging for Charles to try to kiss at it and meet the delighted curve of Erik’s lips with his own. “I’m asking you to advise me in ways—in a way that is _useful_ to me. Prove to me that I’ve made a wrong decision: show me why, from _my_ point of view. Convince me that the decision I’ve made is detrimental to those things I hold dear.”  
  
A scoff drags out of his throat before Erik’s has the chance to finish. “ _Your_ point of view. Your point of view is _flawed_.”  
  
Flawed, but, for someone so flawed, Erik is relaxed, drawing out pictures into Charles skin. It’s—not exactly a game, but near enough to one that he’s not riled. It isn’t real for him—not when he already believes he’s won.  
  
Erik’s own logic, then. Fine. “From your point of view, devoting your whole life to killing Shaw was justified, to the point where you carried a coin in your pocket, saved from when you failed to move it and he killed your mother. You killed him with it. And from your point of view, it was a good thing. From _my_ point of view, it was agony. Whose perspective was correct?”  
  
Afterward, in the infirmary, he’d explained to Erik about the coin, and about what it had done, but it had been a brief conversation, uttered from between gritted teeth and shadowed by the resentment of being claimed as Erik’s bearer. Erik’s own guilt at the pain he’d caused had only worsened the situation, and Charles had turned aside from the topic, more interested in focusing on the future harm Erik was fixing to do, rather than on what he’d already done.  
  
Now _this_ discussion is real to Erik. Nice to know all it took was some personal pain—a little guilt, to sweeten the pot. So much for sympathy and understanding the plights of others without direct experience. “You were in his head. You would have felt anything I did to him—“  
  
“That isn’t the point.” Erik’s stomach tenses under his fingers, as though Erik has just now realized he’s being touched. “The point is, from your perspective, it was painless, even satisfying; from mine it was agony. You can’t hope to operate a kingdom using only your own perspective. That’s why a king has advisors: to offer him a different vantage point, to allow him to see how his actions might help or harm others in ways he hasn’t yet foreseen.” Tense or not, Erik isn’t pulling away, and a bit of positive affirmation via touch would likely be welcome. And so it is: Erik breathes out into the touch of Charles’ hand when he slips that hand around to Erik’s side, copying the hold Erik had on him moments before. “If you expect me to argue in deference to your worldview, you have to also try to see things in accordance with _mine.”_  
  
“Just because I don’t agree doesn’t mean I haven’t been listening.” Listening? With his ears, perhaps, but not with his brain—and Erik isn’t inspiring much faith that he’s about to start. He’s far too interested in Charles’ skin, and, in trailing his hand down to the small of Charles’ back, just above the swell of his backside. “When you’ve offered something constructive—military advice, let’s say—I’ve been keen to hear what you’re willing to tell me. If you’ll recall, I asked you for an opinion on something along those lines just minutes ago, and, rather than taking the opportunity to make yourself heard, you latched onto the kind of lecturing that you know won’t change my mind.”  
  
Yes. Because the kind of lecturing he’s doing, most people call _logic._ It’s only because this is Erik’s particular brand of madness that they’ve hit a wall. Like spinning wheels in the mud: they’re going nowhere fast.  
  
“Fine? You want military advice?” There’s no guaranteed agreement, but if Erik tosses aside his military opinions also, it will only serve to prove exactly how dismissive he is.  
  
Except, it’s true that Erik has taken his advice before.  
  
And he _should_. It’s sound advice. There’s no reason to feel thankful to him for listening, when it’s _in Erik’s favor_ to listen.  
  
“When the city surrenders,” he begins carefully, digging the tips of his fingers into Erik’s abdomen and enjoying the flutter of muscles under the bite of his touch, “you give the people jobs.”  
  
As much as Erik generally welcomes any sort of caress from his husband, he has, like any person with nerves, figured out that Charles’ imitation of claws is nowhere near a caress: his hand curls around Charles’ own, plucking it away from his stomach and raising it to his lips, brushing a kiss over the knuckles before dropping it back down and kneading at it with his thumb, running it over the bones and pressing down in the valley between each finger. “And why would I do something like that? Normally, when someone resists you, you don’t give them paid work after.”  
  
“No. And, normally, the aftermath of a mess like this is characterized by unrest and a high loss of life. Trying a new strategy isn’t necessarily a bad thing.”  
  
“All right. I’m listening.”  
  
Now _that_ would be a miracle. “If people feel that their lives under your rule are agreeable, they’ll see no reason to revolt. If you make the prospect of surrender a daunting one, they have reason to hold out: telling them that, if they throw their lot in with you, they’ll be given work and food, and that they won’t be clapped in irons—it saps their idea of oppression. Cruelty doesn’t put men down: complacency does. Foster a sense of contentment, and they’ll have no reason to fight.”  
  
Erik’s thumb makes another pass over Charles’ knuckles before diving for unexplored territory and pressing to Charles’ palm until he gives in and splays his hand wide for Erik’s inspection. Mumbling out a pleased little noise, he drags the tip of his nail along the lines of his palm. Thank the gods it’s his left hand. Were it his right… there would be the mark, and he isn’t ready, may _never_ be ready.  
  
So adamantly abstaining from inspecting the mark on his wrist cannot possibly be healthy, but examining it would make it real, and it’s too soon for that.  
  
Soon, though. There’s no avoiding it forever—and Erik is dreadfully insistent in pushing things onto him, rather like now, with his incessant stroking. “And where do you think I’ll get this food from?”  
  
“You already have it. The other regions took in their harvests just a few weeks ago.”  
  
“So, I should take food from the other regions—those which have accepted my rule—and give it instead to a region that resists me? I’m not in the habit of rewarding wrongdoing, Charles.”  
  
Not by _Erik’s_ definition of wrongdoing, anyway: he’s quite quick to reward wrongdoing by any rational person’s standard. Someone like Angel, or Raven—traitors, but Erik has raised them to positions of power: reward for wrongdoing at its finest.  
  
“It isn’t a reward: it’s an exchange of services. The city itself is well known for its embroidery and clothing, and for its cobblers. If you let people go back to what they were doing before the war, they’ll again start venturing outside the walls to tend to the cattle, and, before you know it, tannery will begin again. And a good many people rode out to the factories on the river every day also: if they’re guaranteed safe passage as they were before you marched on Westchester, the textile business will pick back up too. You need those things: clothes and shoes. Let Westchester make clothes for the army. Because Westchester already has top-notch facilities, you could do it for less than you’re doing it now and achieve a better product at the same time, since, currently, you’re using substandard production.”  
  
“I provide them with food, they provide me with clothes and shoes?” As bemused as Erik sounds, he’s not dismissing it out of hand, and, if anything, he’s stalling, with any luck out of some attempt to turn the idea over in his mind from all angles. Consideration is good. The _plan_ is good, and if Erik considers it fairly, he’ll adopt it. “I’m to provide food to _anyone_ who offers me one of these services, then? I would think that would unbalance the economy: everyone would rush off to do those jobs, and those jobs only. Everything else would fall by the wayside.”  
  
Erik’s hand is very warm against his own, and it’s trigged sweating on both their palms. That’s enough of that, then: pulling away, Charles flips over onto his back, which Erik allows amiably enough, smiling and drawing his newly freed hand over the space between Charles’ eyebrows, tracing at the creases.  
  
“Hardly,” he answers, wrinkling his brow under Erik’s touch. “The people in those industries still need other services: you give them more than enough food, and they’ll use the surplus to trade with other people in other industries.”  
  
“Unless they hoard it for themselves and decide to do without in terms of other goods.”  
  
“It’s possible: for the time being, then, make it a stipulation that, in order to receive wages from the government, anyone accepting the payment must spend a fourth of what’s paid to them.”  
  
“A very controlled economy, Charles: I wouldn’t have thought it of you, seeing as you’re so fond of regional and personal autonomy.”  
  
It’s hard to shake the impression that he’s being teased: indeed, Erik’s lips quirk when Charles’ brow wrinkles more and he tries to shake Erik’s touch off, only to succeed in dislodging it down to his eyebrow, where Erik trails a knuckle over the thin line of hair. “I wouldn’t advocate it normally: wartime is different. You know that.”  
  
“Regardless, it’s a plan I’m willing to try.”  
  
Oh. He hadn’t… thought, exactly. The idea is sound, and Erik _should_ take his advice—it’s not a favor, but simple practicality—and, yet, believing that Erik is willing to incorporate these ideas on such a practical level—there must be a catch. An indulgence, surely, and Erik will tug it back out of reach at the smallest sign of misbehavior.  
  
“You don’t believe me?”  
  
Is he that obvious? “You haven’t been particularly keen to listen to me prior to this.”  
  
“I listened to you all the time on campaign. You planned, and I executed your plans: where would you get the idea that I don’t trust your political and tactical judgment?”  
  
“That isn’t—“ He closes his mouth at the last moment, turning away. He has half a mind to roll over onto his side again, for the purpose of pressing his face against Erik’s arm and refusing to address the question, but Erik has pre-empted him with a hand down on his shoulder, pinning him, open and splayed out, over Erik’s knees. It’s a wonder Erik’s legs haven’t gone numb. “I know you trust my judgment in those things. But I’m surprised you trust that I haven’t wound something into these plans that would be a detriment to you.”  
  
Erik shrugs. “I’m not positive you _haven’t._ But I’d like to think I could catch any snag you’ve laid before it destroys anything major. And, should I find—“ He breaks off, biting at the inside of his cheek. “I wouldn’t want to, Charles, but you’d regret it in the things you’d lose: I’d be more careful with your advice in the future, and you’re more than smart enough to realize that you’d lose a great deal of potential influence were that to happen. I’m trusting that you’ll see it isn’t worth it to try that.” The smile that he drags up onto his face is brittle, worse than cracking plastic. “And, on that note: is there anything about what you’ve told me that you might like to amend? _”_  
  
Frankly, there’s a bit of unease at the fact that, no, there’s nothing to hide. The advice is sound: he’s made no effort to conceal anything within it. This plan _is_ what’s best for the people, but it’s also what’s best for Erik, and it’s frustrating to realize that.  
  
“There’s nothing,” he mumbles, and he must appear alarmingly pathetic, because Erik frowns down at him and strokes back the first bit of hair that he gets his hands on. Feels nice—though it might be about time for another wash. Tonight, maybe, though this time he’d fancy a shower, rather than a long, drawn-out bath.  
  
“Then you’re worrying about nothing.”  
  
The falseness to Erik’s expression drops away, replaced by a decadent degree of affection: it’s displayed in the disappearing tension in his cheeks and the easy brush of his fingers, even in the slight flex of his thighs under Charles’ back. They must be going numb, from taking weight for so long.  
  
“You worry so much: I’m not sure how you contain it all.” Said with a lopsided smile, but—it would appear they’ve moved past the point of this evening’s debate. As it is, Erik is leaning back into the couch again, hefting Charles along with him by a grip on his side. “How about something that’s simply… pleasant.”  
  
As if Erik would have the corner on that market. But—in this case, he might have a point. It’s been quite a while since they’ve used their mutations for nothing more than the joy they can bring—and, if he’s reading Erik’s cues right, that’s precisely what Erik is now intending.  
  
Show off. But… a very talented and entertaining one.  
  
“What did that used to be?” Charles asks, eyeing the lump of metal that sails over to hover a few inches from Erik’s outstretched palm.  
  
Erik smirk has the trappings of someone caught in the act—and who’s pleased about it. “Don’t tell me you were fond of that dinner tray?”  
  
Erik is a menace—but it’s difficult to be angry at him for _this._ “Not as such.”  
  
“Good.” His fingers twitch, and the metal ripples, as if connected to Erik’s fingers by invisible strings. “You call the shapes; I’ll make what you say.”  
  
Mutations are fascinating things, and, by anyone’s standards, Erik’s is astounding, beautiful in ways that can’t practically be understood. It’s something that has to be seen: explanation falls short, and even sight isn’t sufficient to do it justice. There have been many instances when Charles has sat back and done nothing more than watch, drinking in the pleasure of such an amazing thing.  
  
Turning down a demonstration of the beauty of Erik’s talent, solely to be disagreeable? It isn’t worth it.  
  
“Square.”  
  
Erik laughs, delight seeping into the noise, and, already, he’s reforming the metal into angular planes and lines. It hovers over his palm, molded into a perfect square. He’s gotten quicker at it since the last time they did this, a week or so before Shaw’s capture. He must have been practicing.  
  
“Star.”  
  
The square bends inward, flattening simultaneously and sharpening into six pointed angles. “Fantastic,” he breathes, reaching out to run a fingertip along the edge of the metal. He’s never actually touched before, when Erik has done this, and he’s not quite sure what to expect, but it didn’t seem likely to be this: the metal is perfectly smoothed—not a catch or a bump anywhere as there might have been if it had been cut. “Triangle.”  
  
Twisting under Charles’ fingers this time, three of the points crumple inward, thickening the figure, as a triangle appears under his hand. It hangs suspended for a few seconds before gliding forward, almost affectionately, to bump into his hand, pressing along his palm.  
  
Amazing. Even when Erik did this for him before, it wasn’t quite like this, with the luxury to touch both Erik and the metal at the same time. Like this, the experience is beyond fascinating, venturing into territory that makes his fingers itch for a pen with which to take notes—for the luxury to examine this for hours on end. Why is it that the metal pulses whenever Erik moves, and why does it gravitate toward Charles’ own touch? And why is Erik nearly quivering with excitement one second—usually when the metal morphs—and languid, deeply relaxed—typically once the shape has been formed—mere seconds later?  
  
“Can you break it apart into lines?”  
  
“I don’t see why not.”  
  
Meaning he hasn’t tried before, or he’s choosing to sound indulgent. There’s more chance of the later: Erik’s control over metal has, on numerous occasions, proved to be extensive, and there’s very little possibility that he hasn’t before separated a solid into pieces, streaming them out in the air in a picture of metallic floating spaghetti. Though… perhaps he hasn’t done that _quite_ for this purpose.  
  
There can’t be much call to twine the strips of metal around a person’s wrist for any practical reason, but Erik does it willingly enough now, slithering the metal down Charles’ arm before pulling it back and launching it up into the air: the ends meet and meld, while the strips themselves braid back together.  
  
“Clever.” And if he sounds a trifle too enraptured, well, anyone would be.  
  
The metal dips down, settling into Charles’ palm when he reaches out to catch it. As focused as he is on the braid, he almost doesn’t notice Erik hoisting him up into a sitting position. When his backside slips over Erik’s thighs and then drops to the cushions on the other side, the slight jostle breaks his concentration momentarily, but he settles for shooting Erik a quick, barely-there glare, situating his back against the sofa arm, and returning to poking at the metal.  
  
Amazing, how Erik has welded it together so seamlessly. There’s nothing reheating the metal to make it more malleable: only Erik, causing it to dance to his commands. Though, it’s slightly warm to the touch: bending must have that effect.  
  
“Numerous spheres,” he says, wanting to experience the metal changing under his fingers again.  
  
It isn’t the only thing that changes: Erik tenses again as he reshapes the metal, still using only one hand, his free one encircling Charles’ shoulders. And—when had Erik gotten so close, drawn them so near together? His brow is resting against Charles’ temple, angled slightly so as to allow him to keep his eyes on the metal.  
  
“Oh, that’s—do you practice that?” Snatching one of the spheres out of the air, he rolls it in his palm, enjoying the smoothness. The others continue to circle about, each a few feet from his face. Most people might find that disconcerting. There _is_ plenty of cause to fear the presence of metal he has no control over, especially when it’s this close to his face and more than capable of doing damage. If it were anyone other than Erik controlling the spheres, he’d have misgivings.  
  
But to believe that Erik would physically harm him so casually… Of the many matters that deserve his worry, that isn’t one of them.  
  
“I do, actually,” Erik admits. “I’ve always sculpted in my free time, mostly on a small scale, as an exercise to fine-tune my skills. It fell by the wayside while we were plotting against Shaw, but I’ve been meaning to take it up again.” The sphere in Charles’ hand zips out of his grasp, meeting the others in the air and meshing once again back into a lump of metal. Like a faithful pet, it comes when called and draws into Erik’s waiting hand, where he can pluck it out of the air and, pinching it between the tips of his fingers, display it in Charles’ direct line of sight.  
  
When Charles goes to reach for it again, Erik tugs it away with a low chuckle that reverberates all through his chest, sending off vibrations into Charles’ skin. He sets the metal aside on the sofa.  
  
“Anything you’d like to request?” Erik asks. Now that the metal is gone, it’s much easier to register precisely how close Erik has gotten. _Very_ close: the warmth of his breath tickles against Charles’ cheekbone and the roots of his hair, and while the room hasn’t felt overly cold up to this point, it must be somewhat chilled, since Erik’s nose is icy where he nudges it against Charles’ temple. “I’ve been told I make nice knives.”  
  
And another thing he makes? Advances. Now, for instance. Slow and sure, careful, so as not to startle, but at home, familiar, his ease with Charles’ body unmistakable. It shouldn’t be; they’ve only slept together a handful of times. How can it be that he’s so self-assured in reaching down to clutch the side of Charles’ opposite thigh in order to tug him closer? So close. Every part of Charles sinks into the proximity, more than before, when he hadn’t noticed it, but this—being painted up against Erik’s chest with an arm around his shoulders and one stretched across his lap to his opposite side—the room is surely not cold anymore, or else his body has begun to sweat from the heat that’s pooling down low in his stomach.  
  
“I don’t want a knife,” he murmurs, tipping closer.  
  
Erik snorts. “No. I don’t think _that_ is what you want at all.”  
  
Want. Yes, want. If he knew his own wants, and could control them, this would be easier, less twisted—but the bond, and Erik, and—is it the bond _or_ Erik, or both at once? Biological imperative doesn’t cleanly peel away from emotion.  
  
“If we’re talking about things I don’t want, I—I don’t—I don’t want a child. Not yet.” Yes, there. That. Remember why this is bad. Remember—remember a thought other than the deep, heady scent that drifts up against him. It’s metal and a hint of sweat, pressing in and stunning him into compliance, and into taking another breath. And Erik, waiting, giving him the chance, if he wants it, to back away, though the tilt of his head and that sharkish smile make it less a presentation of an option and more a wait for the inevitable.  
  
“I’m not—“ But the effect drains away out of the words when he takes in exactly how close his own mouth is to Erik’s. A tiny nudge, and he’d bump them together.  
  
“Twenty-nine is older than most,” Erik muses, though he has the good grace to suppress his smile.  
  
There’s a meaning there—a point he should catch and fight, but the rhythm of Erik’s mouth draws him in and ties him up in knots. There’s no way that a regular bowing and thinning of muscle and flesh should be so alluring, but he’s drawn, and—  
  
This is what he did before. That damning occasion when his control slipped, and there had been a kiss—and then the bond.  
  
Not this time.  
  
Pulling back jars an ache loose in his chest, but he does it: closes his eyes and exhales, pressing his lips together and leaning back, pouring his weight into Erik’s arm, and, in doing so, making it clear that, no, not this time. Not. This. Time.  
  
If he’s clear, and there’s no confusion—another moment this week, he’ll give Erik one of the two times he promised, but not when he’s this open, so unanchored as to nearly initiate this himself. Being this close to wanting it—it’s dangerous, and the objectivity needs to return and coat his view before he can let this happen. It’s safer that way.  
  
Inside his head, the bond batters against his shields, quivering in displeasure, like a thing alive and possessed, but he clamps down on it ruthlessly and tries to pretend that his flinch isn’t from the mental backlash. A few seconds more and he could have slipped under and lost himself to that tug again. Like the meeting with Azazel in the camp—like so many times before, when he’s lost himself in the haziness of his own biology.  
  
Erik huffs out a laugh. “Well. Maybe next time.”  
  
Because for Erik it is only a matter of time before Charles asks. But, for now—he’ll get what he wants, using his warm hands and the sweetness of his kisses, pressed to the corner of Charles’ mouth, the top, directly over the swell—a perfect cupid’s bow, his mother had once told him—and back again to the side. The motion tickles, and Charles darts his tongue out to lick the itching skin.  
  
Erik catches him there, pressing forward and sliding their tongues together, nudging, prying Charles’ mouth open wider and tilting his head back. Hot and wet and there’s no sense in saying that it tastes good, when it doesn’t _exactly_ taste good, and… that doesn’t matter much. Erik is bitter with the wine he had for dinner, but the taste drifts by Charles’ senses, heat already rushing down to fill his groin, screaming for more and more and more—and kissing is a part of that. If he can get _more_ , can lick his way into Erik’s mouth—let Erik in between his teeth—the burning might stop.  
  
Please, don’t let it stop.  
  
He means to protest, and his mouth moves with the words, but that’s all the better for kissing. No—there was a way to refuse, that Erik has allowed—and being in a position to allow anything is the problem to begin with. Don’t—this shouldn’t happen like this—  
  
Tipping to the side, he wrenches himself out of Erik’s grip quickly enough that the element of surprise combines with gravity to roll him straight off onto the floor. Not such an accomplishment—or, if it is, accomplishment hurts. The damn floor is _hard_.  
  
The air leaves his lungs with a wheeze and, for the passing of a handful of seconds, he’s left stunned on the floor. Well, not too stunned to roll. That comes naturally: enough time in battle will do the trick and teach any soldier to roll out of harm’s way before the danger returns.  
  
What it doesn’t teach is what to do if, upon flipping over several times, you’re pinned by a reasonably heavy man who is _not_ intent on killing you.  
  
“Gods in heaven, Charles, do _you_ even know what you want?”  
  
No, he does: that’s the problem. That heat—he’d like that back, please, with Erik’s mouth besides, and his hands, tripping Charles’ nervous system in places he hadn’t known he’d had. Wanting isn’t the problem: the problem comes in knowing he _shouldn’t_ want.  
  
“Hold _still_ —“  
  
Teeth on his neck, and he freezes under the pressure. One wrong move, and those teeth could do some serious damage—but it’s Erik. He might bite down, but it wouldn’t be more than a pinch. So, move, twist—he jerks his hand up to smack at Erik, and he succeeds in getting a glancing blow to his head—  
  
Those teeth bear down, and he yelps, stunned by the sudden flare of pain. Not enough to break skin, and Erik licks over it, soothing, though his grip on Charles’ wrist is hard enough to hurt. Not much, and not badly, but the hint of a bite is there.  
  
“If you tell me ‘no,’ I’ll stop.”  
  
And what is struggling, then? Is this only a bit of play, a snatch of wrestling between lovers? Say no—he _could_ say no, but he can only say no so many times, and this isn’t bad—he wants it, he does, he’s burning with the want of it—and wanting it can outweigh the not-wanting, if he lets it. That might not be the case later, toward the end of the week, if he has two times left to go, and the option to refuse is gone.  
  
Having that option—he can cling to that option, if he needs to stop this.  
  
He’d kissed back. Why—why—?  
  
“Last chance, Charles.”  
  
What is Erik looking for, permission? That’s worse than everything combined. If this is happening, he can leak his guilt out by trying to knee Erik in the stomach, and a “yes” would never let him do that.  
  
Groaning, he clenches the fingers of the trapped hand down into a fist, spasming the tendons in his wrist against Erik’s hold.  
  
With a bit of wiggling, he gets his other hand free—left, non-dominant—and flails out to the side. The back of his knuckles slam into something solid, and he whimpers from the brief flash of pain—from the ache in his hips too, where Erik’s own hipbones are slotted uncomfortably against his own—and fumbles for whatever he hit. The edge of a table. The side table to the sofa. Must be. He curls his fingers around the leg, holding on.  
  
The sensation of Erik cupping him through his trousers makes him cry out, and his grip spasms, digging polite, well-groomed nails into the wood. There might be marks.  
  
Speaking of marks: Erik’s teeth are still set on his throat, directly above the pulse-point. He laves his tongue over where he’d bitten, and, though he’s been at it for nearly a minute, it’s somehow a surprise when he dips lower, exploring down to a collarbone—and pulling up short when blocked by a barrier of cotton.  
  
Not that it matters. It appears Erik was dead set on making that knife he offered—and he’s more than happy to use it to slice straight through the shirt anywhere that it might impede its own removal. He pulls it away, tossing it carelessly to the side.  
  
Oh. _Oh._ Naked from the waist up, and once—Erik’s free hand twitches toward the hem of his own, but he stops, noticing the impossibility of holding down a wrist while stripping.  
  
A problem easily solved: that knife just as quickly becomes cuffs, and those cuffs snap to Charles’ wrists, pinning them where they are.  
  
“Erik—“ Is that his voice? It sounds wrecked.  
  
“Here, Darling.” And so he is, nuzzling in close, up into the joint behind Charles’ jaw, rooting out any sweat lingering in that pocket of skin and bone, and licking it away. “All right?”  
  
“Hips hurt.”  
  
A fleeting frown, and Erik quickly dislodges himself. “Sorry,” he says, dropping an apologetic kiss to Charles’ face, under his eye and to the right of his nose.  
  
That’s better: with Erik half off him and mostly on the floor, leaving only their chests stuck together, there’s no more angry jab of bone. And, like this, Erik’s heat rolls off onto Charles’ skin. That’s—how is he so warm? So perfectly, reassuringly warm?  
  
“If you really want me to stop, Charles, I will.”  
  
Consent: it doesn’t mean what it used to mean. It’s refusal _for now_. But the issue will rear its head again later. And maybe, just possibly, he might go crazy if Erik stops now anyway.  
  
Whining high in his throat, he drags his right leg up as high as he can and hooks it around Erik’s waist, tugging him forward, enough that Erik totters and falls, reaching out to catch himself on his elbows. That holds his weight well enough, though he might have floor burns after, despite paying it no mind at the present, intent instead on leaning in and laving his tongue over Charles’ collarbone, eventually working his way over to the opposite side.  
  
Not that he stops there: as keen as Erik is on throwing all his focus into something, he’s a surprisingly apt multi-tasker when he wants to be. Now would be the time—and he’s clever about it, tipping himself to the side and onto one elbow while he palms his way down Charles’ chest, lagging to the right and withholding pressure where it’s most wanted in favor of skittering his fingers over a hip, a thigh, and finally back to the button at Charles’ waist.  
  
One good yank and the trousers snag lower, caught on his backside; another tug and they dip down below to catch at his thighs. That’s intolerable: whether or not he’s figured out if this is something he can let himself want, this business of half-way is maddening.  
  
No, thank you, being bound up with his own trousers twisted about his thighs is nothing he’s keen to experience. Wiggling to free himself is by no means the most dignified option, but—what a side effect. What a brilliant by-product, as it knocks him up against Erik’s body, providing a tease of friction for his rapidly hardening cock.  
  
“You don’t get to tease me,” he snaps.  
  
“Oh?” Amused.  
  
Insulting, more like. “No. You get—get your—get these off me, right _now_.”  
  
He’ll suck Erik off, and Erik can suck him off: their deal never clarified _what kind_ of sex had to happen twice a week. That will do, and there’s no chance of pregnancy, no chance of making this worse than it already is. That’s all right. Everything is good. Just fine. Withholding sex won’t make this better, but they’ll avoid the kind that could make things worse.  
  
“If you like.” The words rumble out against his chest, as smug as Erik’s smile— _very_ smug—but he’s already twitching his wrists against the cuffs, looking for an angle that might help, might get him free, might—that is _good_ ….  
  
“I’d _like_ —“ A kiss to his hipbone, and he bites down on a gasp, “—like for you to take your metal back.”  
  
Another pleased rumble. “ _My_ metal?”  
  
“ _Yes_.”  
  
“Oh?” But Erik doesn’t move to budge the cuffs, the bloody wanker, as smug as he is, with his vaunted control. To hell with that. If nothing else, Charles will damn well have what he wants in bed: Erik owes him that much.  
  
“Damn you—damn— _suck me off_.”  
  
Oh, that is… really something. Really bloody fantastic—Erik chuckling like that, face nestled down by the base of Charles’ cock. Hips go up, Erik’s face turns, and—he shouldn’t be so beautiful. But Erik—he _is._ Tilting his face to look up the line of Charles’ chest and to meet Charles’ heat-glazed stare from beneath eyelashes that are too soft and innocent-looking to match Erik’s personality. But the smile is pure sin.  
  
Accommodating to the last—like hell, as _if_ —Erik tugs the trousers the rest of the way down, stopping to snag the socks when he peels the trousers all the way off.  
  
Asking for this was foolish. Erik is still clothed: lounge pants that hug his backside just right, and a loose white shirt, tied up the front, though slipping to the side, leaving room for a collarbone to peek out.  
  
“ _Erik_.”  
  
He looks beautiful. Heart-breakingly beautiful.   
  
It should have been easy, the two of them. If things had been different.  
  
Erik stills, expression freezing: when it shatters, the worry creeps up.  
  
Oh. Those—that wetness on his own skin, that he can feel… he’s crying. It’s on his cheeks.  
  
He must look a mess, to prompt Erik to drop everything so quickly: the metal flies off his wrists as though burned by the skin, clattering to the floor somewhere in the distance, though he has little time to consider before Erik has scrambled up the distance between them and grabbed on, rolling them both.  
  
It’s a tangle of limbs, and the mess leaks to his brain, jumbling it, but when he locks back in on his location, it’s to find that he’s lying on top of Erik’s chest, face tucked against Erik’s neck and shoulder, with Erik’s hand curved to the back of his head, holding him steady, the other hand glued to the small of his back.  
  
Erik doesn’t say anything. He’s quiet, save for the sharp, even slices of breath that cut through the air next to Charles’ ear.  
  
Silence is, in so many ways, one of the hardest things. Words have a meaning, at most a few meanings, but silence is filled in by the listener. Erik could be thinking anything, nothing, things that Charles wants and things he fears, or all of those concepts at once. Breathing, breathing—keep it up, when that’s the only method of making inroads into the silence.  
  
They haven’t been like this in a very long time: just being, and just breathing.  
  
“I would have been happy with you, if things were different.”  
  
The words drop between them, pressing through into skin and bone and thought. Right to the heart of things.  
  
Though Erik’s breath hitches, he doesn’t reply immediately. When the words finally do come, they’re resigned, deadened in a way that has never been Erik. Not Erik, who believes he can fight his way out of anything. “I know.”  
  
“We could—“ But even as he goes to say it, he knows it’s impossible. Neither he nor Erik is willing to turn from trying to make the world into what they want it to be. And what would they do, anyhow? Go live together in a cabin somewhere, away from prying eyes? And what of when things begin deteriorating politically? Because they would—deteriorate, that is. The political situation is a powder keg, primed to blow.  
  
“Exactly,” Erik breathes out against his skull.  
  
What, then? Is this the only thing left for them, to live out a life where everything is a war? Exhaling, he smoothes his cheek along Erik’s chest, only realizing when the steady _thumpthump_ begins pulsing under his ear that he’s been seeking out Erik’s heartbeat. The noise is comforting, and he leans into it, tracing the fingers of his hand down the dip between Erik’s pectorals, down lower to his stomach, where he stops, splaying his hand. There’s nothing sexual about it: intimate, yes, and, if he could, he’d crawl right up inside of Erik and just… sleep. Warm and safe and cared for, peaceful as he hasn’t been in ages—and that’s nothing he can have, if the world is there to encroach.  
  
Erik doesn’t push him for anything more heated. As near as they’d both been minutes before, Erik’s continued hardness between them is perfectly expected, but nothing that he does pushes for any kind of completion, and both of them are gradually softening as the world sneaks in around them. Of all the things that shouldn’t be in their bed—if they were able to kick out the world, maybe things could work.  
  
It isn’t possible, of course.  
  
Erik may be thinking the same. As seldom as they do it nowadays, once that was quite common, that alignment of thought. Though, that shared thought was never exactly this _close_ , with Erik reaching out and stroking his fingers down Charles’ jaw line, sighing a little as he does, and leaning back against the floor, gazing up at the ceiling.  
  
That’s not to say his attention is on the paneled ceiling—quite the opposite, in fact. Erik has never needed sight to concentrate on that which is closest to him, and, case in point, he’s had times when he’s worked with metal better when not looking.  
  
There will never be a time when the sight of Erik crafting metal is not breathtaking. And he does it now: the metal from their game jumps to his fingers, settling in the spaces between his knuckles and flowing freely, twining in and out of his fingers in a continuous stream. When he finally twitches his hand, it flattens into something more solid, forming up into sheets of metal that warp and drift together, folding into each other and curling about the pieces deeper toward the center.  
  
Charles watches, his head down on Erik’s chest, with his eyes tilted to the side, slightly upward, where Erik’s hand drifts at chest level. “Oh—“ Gods, _gorgeous_.  
  
Erik’s hand closes around the metal lump scarcely half a second before Charles would have reached out to try to touch. It isn’t that he _needs_ to touch, in order to believe what Erik is doing, but it’s a beautiful thing, and beautiful things should, when possible, take as many of one’s senses as possible to appreciate.  
  
There was never any doubt what Erik was making. He’s too skilled to produce a work that doesn’t look as he intends it to look, but there’s still a kind of magic to the gesture when Erik curls his arm back over toward Charles and, with every appearance of a slow reveal, peels his fingers back away from the metal and drops it into Charles’ palm.  
  
“You like it?”  
  
Like it? It’s amazing. The detail, and the speed at which Erik made it— “Can I keep it?”  
  
“Of course.” His fingers slide over the part of jaw line that he’s still touching, dipping, oddly curious, to skim at the skin under Charles’ jaw. “I’d hoped you would. Later, if you can be persuaded to play, you can even use it.”  
  
A gift and a dab of manipulation, all in one go: how very like Erik. But, taken literally, what Erik has made him is precisely the same.  
  
Truth be told, he probably ought to be a touch insulted at what Erik has crafted for him.  
  
A prefect metal chess piece, molded into the shape of the queen, has certain connotations that could be overwhelmingly negative, when his actual gender is taken into account.  
  
How also very like Erik: vaguely insulting, especially on the surface, but with a deeper layer that, if the time is taken to dig down to it, has the potential to say something spectacular.  
  
“The most important piece on the board,” he whispers out across Erik’s skin. “You’re such a flatterer.”  
  
Those fingertips travel down his throat, where Erik spreads his hand, framing with his thumb and forefinger. His grip is wide enough that his fingers reach most of the way up the sides of Charles’ neck. “Everyone knows the queen holds the real power.”  
  
“I hardly think that reflects our circumst—“  
  
“Without you, I’m nothing.”  
  
Charles squeezes his eyes shut against the meaning. Too much, near enough to curdle the blood in his heart, when all he ever wanted was to be the completing piece in this strange, twisted puzzle that is Erik—when he didn’t think through just what that meant. It’s all well and good, loving someone that much—being loved that much—but life isn’t a fairy tale, and love doesn’t always make the path smooth, or, indeed, even fit for walking.  
  
“The power behind the throne: it’s yours if you want it, Charles.”  
  
Does he? It may not matter. “You’ve gotten very good,” he says instead, turning the piece between his fingers, digging his nails into the grooves. So much detail.  
  
“At some things, yes. Others, much less so.”  
  
Are they still talking about metalworking? It doesn’t seem like it. “Sometimes, all you need is the patience to learn.”  
  
Erik chest pushes out with a muffled laugh. “Oh? And here I thought practice was the key.”  
  
“You can’t practice what you don’t know.”  
  
Another half-laugh. “And will you teach me, Charles?”  
  
“Depends on what you’re trying to learn.”  
  
“Mmm. I should say so.”  
  
Without looking at Erik, he closes his hand around the chess piece and, with it clutched securely in his palm, turns his head back into Erik’s shoulder. The skin there is warm, and the muscle hard enough that it’s borderline unpleasant to lie against. A woman’s curves are softer, easier, meant to pillow a head—but Erik has always been strength, a safety as much as a danger. Moira never could have taken care of him; Erik will never be capable of stopping.  
  
“Better than a knife?” Erik asks eventually, when the silence has stretched on too long, and their skin has begun to grow tacky where they’re stuck together.  
  
Despite himself, Charles laughs. “Oh, my friend—yes. Yes, it _is._ ”  
  
Anything would be. But this? _This_ most of all. This would, if Erik were really offering him the scope of what he thinks he is—love, influence, a way to make a difference—it would be worth his life.  
  
And that’s good: because that—his life—is what he paid for the hope of those things, only to find that what he paid for isn’t really what he thought it was at all. Or perhaps it is. Perhaps it’s only that the world won’t let it be what it was meant to be. And maybe he’s wrong to want anything else anyway. Either way, that one kiss, the thoughts and desires that led up to the kiss—he has paid dearly for them all.  
  
Squeezing his hand a little tighter, he drinks in the sharp press of metal angles against his palm, and, closing his eyes, he listens to the beat of Erik’s heart.  
  
This alone, please. Just this.


	29. Chapter 29

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, believe it or not, we're rapidly hurtling toward a breaking point. The story may still have a little ways to go, but as I've said previously, that doesn't necessarily mean that it's a slow burn right up to a bid for freedom at the end. All that to say: for better or worse, stuff is going to shake up soon. Consider yourself warned. :)

_Bang, Bang, Bang_  
  
The noise echoes, like rocks falling and bouncing off the ground. Charles turns toward the sound, but rather than cold stone, he’s met with a warm solidness, smooth too, ruling out the rocks. Besides, he’s warm, which wouldn’t make sense in the context.  
  
“Damn them to hell,” someone curses from beside him.  
  
Charles opens his eyes. Ah. The guestroom in Westchester.  
  
Erik is spooned up behind him, one arm tossed over his waist—which is increasingly obvious, since Erik is tightening his hold. One quick wiggle confirms the suspicion: Erik is tucked neatly against the whole line of his body, with Charles’ backside snug against his groin, and Erik’s knees tucked into the space behind Charles’; their feet are tangled up too. It’s close, and intimate, and until a moment ago it had been easy and unacknowledged, and everything they’ve so seldom been able to achieve in these last few weeks.  
  
The noise comes again, louder this time, and with an accompanying call: “Your Majesty?”  
  
A reply is tumbling around in his mouth, and he only just catches it in time to stop himself from calling back: the summons is not for him. His body, though, has unfortunately not caught up with mind, and though he keeps the noise buried inside him, he does twitch against Erik.  
  
“It’s barely light,” Erik grouses, directly into Charles’ neck. “Can’t they wait until the sun is fully up?”  
  
“Could be something important.”  
  
Erik grunts, poking his knees into the closest available flesh—the back of Charles’ legs—and biting out a curse. But he does turn, angling his head over his shoulder and toward the door. “Hold your peace! I’ll be a minute.” More than a minute, if Erik has his way: he flops back over, burying his face in the hair at the back of Charles’ head, and spewing out a line of uncomplimentary curses.  
  
“Should have warned you, I suppose: a king’s private time is seldom held sacred.”  
  
“So I’m finding.” One more groan, and he lets go of Charles, untangling their legs and flopping over onto his back. Mostly out of curiosity, Charles turns over after him, propping himself up on one elbow and staring down at his husband.  
  
Erik is, quite decidedly, not an easy person to wake—at least not when he’s assured that the area has been secured. It’s actually rather lovely: he never looks more like a disgruntled child than when he’s being woken. There’s an innocence to him now that’s never present at any other time, and it’s a treat to watch that flourish, even if it will soon vanish.  
  
“Oh, it’s not as bad as all that,” he promises. Though, far from being pure reassurance, it’s primarily rooted in the desire to watch Erik grimace—and there he goes, scrunching up his face and wrinkling his nose, tossing a hand over his eyes and cursing yet again as though he’s sure the world is ending.  
  
Truly, though, it isn’t wise to keep the men at the door waiting. It could be something as simple as a message from one of the regional heads, asking for advice in as timely a manner as possible, or it could be notice that one of the other regions has declared war… again.  
  
“Coming, coming,” Erik mutters, rolling out of bed, aided by an encouraging push to his backside, that, while it pulls a grumble out of him, also tugs the corners of his lips upward into something suspiciously like a smile.  
  
Snagging a robe on the way to the door, Erik drapes it over his shoulders and cinches it at his waist with a particularly vicious tug. Whoever is waiting to deliver a message had best brace himself: Erik is cold at the best of times to those not close to him, and he’s unlikely to be any more receptive at this time of the morning.  
  
With any luck, the news at the door will be nothing. But… it doesn’t feel like nothing. There’s a nervousness radiating from the general direction of the door, and it rubs up against the front of Charles’ mind, almost cat-like, begging for his attention: the sense creeps, pushing him to follow Erik out of bed. Where are his clothes, where are—? Oh, right: the shirt was thoroughly destroyed, and the trousers are on the other side of the room. That leaves… Erik’s shirt. Not much of an option, when it will put Erik in a mood, but Erik’s already at the door, reaching to open it, doubtless thinking this will be quick and won’t require opening the door any further than a crack.  
  
And Erik calls _him_ a dreamer.  
  
“What?” Erik barks, though the sound is slightly muffled by the fold of cloth as Charles tugs Erik’s tunic on over his head. It’s the tunic Erik was wearing yesterday, meant for lounging and, as such, loose and billowy: on Charles it’s practically engulfing, hanging off one shoulder and reaching past mid-thigh. The worst part is, that isn’t fully disagreeable: unbidden, a tingling of comfort starts up at the base of his spine, spreading quickly the more Erik’s scent wraps around him, and before he thinks it through, he’s curling his arms around himself, twinning his fingers into the voluminous folds of fabric like a small child wrapping up in a blanket.  
  
“Your Majesty,” the voice behind the door answers, quick and breathless—this is no simple missive. No one sounds like that when bringing easy news. “The city is opening its gates to us as we speak.”  
  
Despite the distance between them, the clenching of the muscles in Erik’s back is noticeable. His shoulders rise and fall, all undulating motion, as he reformulates his stance to lean against the doorpost. “Then why do you I suspect you’re only bringing this news to me because you were the unfortunate individual who lost a drawing of lots?”  
  
Too true. Being the bearer of bad news is no coveted task, and generally not one that drums up many volunteers.  
  
“The outer-lying factions of the rebels took the opportunity to launch an ambush.”  
  
Erik’s fingers clench on the doorframe. “Did they coordinate with the citizens within the walls?”  
  
“We don’t know.”  
  
“Then _find out_. I’ll be down and ready to leave for the city gates in fifteen minutes, and I expect an update by that time.”  
  
That’s an unreasonable request, when all information would come from the front, and there’s no chance of getting there and back in a half hour, let alone fifteen minutes. Heads will most likely roll in deference to Erik’s frustration, and by the looks of it he’s already considering what methods to use: he slams the door, shoving off the doorframe and storming to the other side of the room where the wardrobe has been filled with his things. As violently as he yanks the doors open, it’s a wonder they don’t come right off the hinges.  
  
“I’ll thank you not to damage the furniture,” he rebukes Erik, heading toward him and nudging him aside. His clothes are in the wardrobe too, and he’s going to need to dress if they’re to head to the city gates in a quarter of an hour.  
  
Fingers curling around his wrist pull him up short. “If you wouldn’t mind writing me up some sort of statement—to the troops, to the rebels, both, whatever you think would smooth this over best—I’d be grateful.”  
  
Yes, fine, whatever, but they can talk about this after, once they’ve gone to see the damage and gauged how best to subdue a force that has no base and that is essentially playing hide and seek with them—and shooting from their hiding places. There’s also the matter of figuring out how to handle that group once they’ve been detained, considering the difference of opinion he’s likely to have with Erik.  
  
“I’ll do it tonight. Now let go of me so I can get dressed.”  
  
Erik blinks, and his fingers curl tighter, tugging Charles back away from the wardrobe. “You aren’t coming.”  
  
“Excuse me?” Surely that didn’t mean what it sounded like it meant? This is no battle, and by no means the kind of thing from which Erik swore he’d block him. It isn’t the same. Erik must see that, must—  
  
“I don’t have time to argue with you.” While his voice isn’t harsh, there’s finality in it that’s worse than an outright whipping, and he pushes Charles aside, already shucking his own shirt and reaching into the wardrobe for the undershirts he usually wears beneath his military uniform. “I said you wouldn’t be part of combat again, and I meant it.”  
  
“You doubt my competence?”  
  
Shirt on, he goes for his trousers, pulling them up over his long legs without giving Charles’ so much as a glance, though he’s at liberty to do so: he does up his trousers and belt with his powers, looking back into the wardrobe for his button-up. He could have spared a glance, if he’d wanted to bother.  
  
“We’ve already had this conversation. This has nothing to do with competence and everything to do with you never again purposely being in a combat position where you might come to harm.”  
  
“This isn’t a battle!”  
  
Metal buttons—he should have known. Erik _would_ make his tailor change the plastic ones out. It makes for an easy buttoning: the pieces thread through their holes with no physical aid from Erik, and by the time his shirt is done up, he’s already pulling on his jacket, buttoning that up in the same way.  
  
“It could very well turn into one, if we can get a lock on the location of the rebels.”  
  
“I want—“  
  
For all he’d wanted Erik’s attention, he didn’t particularly want it in the form of being shoved back against the wall next to the wardrobe, Erik’s hand on his upper chest, just under his neck, where he can fit the base of Charles’ neck into the space between his thumb and forefinger. “You’re a liability,” he murmurs, ducking his head down, closing the distance between them, and holding Charles’ eye. He isn’t being overly rough, but his grip is firm enough to banish any hope that he might relent. “I’m not sure of your loyalty, and I won’t bring you into a combat situation where that could prove detrimental to me. Is that a better tactical reason?”  
  
Sheer will power is the only thing that tamps down on his urge to lash out physically. “Is that the _real_ reason?”  
  
Erik laughs bitterly. “No. But it’s one that I think will make better sense to you.”  
  
“Erik—“  
  
But Erik lets him go and pushes away, reaching down for his boots. He pulls them on without another pause, and—how is he supposed to counter Erik, when Erik is denying him his attention? Start getting dressed regardless? There’s not much else he can do.  
  
Stepping by Erik, he plunges his own hands into the wardrobe, blindly riffling through the collection of shirts and jackets, pushing aside dress outfits—his own as well as Erik’s—in favor of the brown standard-issue that is less ostentatious.  
  
“Dress if you want, but you’re not coming. Though, I do have to say, you look very fetching in my shirt.”  
  
 _That_ is all he has to say? Fighting a bitter spike of anger, Charles lurches back out of the wardrobe to glare over at Erik, who is finishing up, already moving onto something else, one hand stretched out over the lock on the weapons cabinet. It clicks open, and Erik digs out his sword, sliding it down onto his belt as he’s already turning and heading back toward Charles, closing and locking the cabinet door behind him with a wave of his hand.  
  
“You think I’ll sit here quietly, writing you a speech and waiting for you?” He gets his hand up before Erik reaches him. It doesn’t do much good, and Erik walks directly into the touch, ignoring it when fingers close over his breast pocket.  
  
“As I told you last night: influence is yours, if you want it. If you don’t, then feel free to storm about the room for the duration of the day. I’ll be back tonight regardless.”  
  
It’s one of the most satisfying things in the world to lay a punch out over Erik’s jaw when Erik leans down for a kiss. Oh, was he not expecting that? How charming, that Erik would expect he’d stand for that kind of condescension.  
  
If Erik would hit back, it would be better. Anything other than the startled look in his eyes, and how he brings his hand gingerly to his mouth, blotting at the beading blood with the back of his hand. Somehow he’s surprised when he lowers his hand to examine the red, though how that’s possible—he _should_ have seen it coming. The blow wasn’t especially hard, but—good enough that Charles is breathing heavily, chest heaving as he glares daggers at Erik.  
  
Erik turns without another word and makes for the door.  
  
“No, you bloody well do _not_ get to do this—“  
  
He’ll fight, and he’ll put himself between Erik and the door, and this thing between them—it will erupt, and _they_ will fight, and if that means trying to take Erik on in a physical confrontation, then he’ll pretend like he doesn’t know the bruises are coming. Erik would beat him soundly in a fight—and that would be better than the fact that Erik refuses to let it reach that point at all.  
  
“Get out of the way,” Erik orders, huffing out a breath. Poor Erik, so put-upon, with his ridiculous husband always refusing to do as he’s told. How very difficult it must be for him. Too damn _bad_.  
  
“No—“  
  
Bloody hell, no, Erik can’t just—but he _can_. He can catch Charles with a piece of metal, can drag him to the side and hold him there, ignoring his thrashing, and he _can_ slip out the door and close it behind him. The lock clicks, and then, only then, does the metal drop to the floor, leaving Charles free to heave himself at the door and pound his fists against it, bellowing Erik’s name into the impending silence.  
  
No one answers.  
  
There must be a guard there. Erik wouldn’t leave him unsupervised. Fine, then. Unless the guard is resistant to telepathy—  
  
He’s not. His thoughts are there, swirling ideas of duty and doing his best to pretend he doesn’t hear what’s happening. It’s really rather awkward for him, listening in on what amounts to a domestic. It’s practically a favor, removing him from the equation—but the moment Charles tries to stretch out his consciousness and latch onto that of the other man, his mind clamps down on itself and throws him backward into his own thoughts. That can’t—can Erik have—?  
  
Yes. The answer is “yes.”  Erik can do as he likes, and gods know how he achieved it, but nature itself is acting on his side. They aren’t in the same room, and somehow Erik has found a way to corral his telepathy. Is that how it usually works? What is the limit on distance? _Is_ there a limit? Perhaps it’s different for telepaths. Emma Frost won’t be any help—she’s not a bearer. Pity, that. She’d understand better if she were—and she might be able to offer some insight on what it means for a creature of the mind to be trapped in a bond that’s already so fundamentally mental.  
  
 _[You can’t do this]_ he thinks as loudly as he can at Erik, blasting all of his rage and fury and negative emotion toward the other end of the bond. Low and behold, the bond vibrates, acknowledging him, but nothing beyond that. Erik won’t answer, no matter how much he’s mentally assaulted, and while it’s clear that he’s listening, he’s giving no more than an assurance of his presence. _[Fuck you.]_  
  
Not the most eloquent finish, but it suits.  
  
That is to say: it does absolutely nothing beyond chasing away a small fraction of the anger.  
  
A _very_ small fraction.  
  
If Erik won’t respond to him, then there must be another way—and, on that note, he slams his shields up as high as they can go, blocking Erik out completely. Another way out, another route—think, think, think. The room can’t have only one exit point. So, find another: if he can’t manipulate anyone else into _letting_ him out, then what options are left? Breaking down the door is always a possibility, but it wouldn’t do much good when there’s a guard directly outside. If he could overpower or outrun the guard, that would give him a chance, but Erik is thorough, and there are likely more guards lurking.  
  
There’s always the window: the room is too far up for a jump, but they’re on the side of the palace facing Westchester, albeit over the courtyard. There’s a ledge, though, and if he were to shimmy out onto it… not the safest option, but _an_ option.  
  
Padding over to the window, he tries the latch on the casement. Nothing. Not locked, but a quick examination proves something significantly more irritating: it’s fused shut. Erik literally welded the window shut. Breaking the window wouldn’t do much good either: the panes of glass are small squares, a few inches tall and perhaps two high, held between pieces of metal. Essentially, the window is a large metal screen.  
  
Damn Erik to hell, he’s been _thorough._  
  
But… as careful as Erik has been, there’s always something to overlook. And, in this case, it may have to do with the structure of the building. Generally, if Erik can’t feel metal, he tends to overlook the make of things. Components like the floorboards, and the fact that the ceiling over the next room is not lined with anything Charles can’t dig through.  
  
The question is, is it worth showing his hand at this stage? He does that, and if Erik comes back too early and finds him at it, there won’t be a second chance. Today has been infuriating, but it might not be worth using scarce opportunities on a situation that could so easily fail.  
  
No, then. For now, he’ll wait, and find the anger another outlet.  
  
Saying it makes it seem like that ought to be the end of it—makes it seem as though he should be able to settle back in the knowledge, reserved and resolute, but that’s never actually how it goes, is it? Waiting is the worst of all, and, no matter what he does now, it’s akin to letting Erik win the day. Erik will come home, find his husband tucked up here, and he’ll think he’s won—and it’s letting him think that he has that kind of power that’s the worst of all.  
  
Breathe in, breathe out. No one ever gets everything they want, and Erik’s satisfaction can be endured, if it has to be. Just… wait it out, wait here today, and know that, maybe another day, it might not be like this.  
  
For now, though, it’s worth doing something constructive. Loathe as he is to obey any of Erik’s missives, it would be the height of foolishness to ignore a good suggestion on the basis of the person who made it: writing up a preliminary speech is actually a reasonable idea.  
  
When he does finally sit down to write after a good deal of pacing and fussing and rifling through the desk for materials, it turns out to be soothing. The scratch of pen on paper, and the flow of ideas—ideas make a difference. Ideas are a contribution he can still make, and recently his mind has been so overloaded with them that it’s been nigh near impossible to make sense of any of it at all. Like a sore being lanced, this way the thoughts can ooze out of his brain and onto the paper, where they can do some good.  
  
Somewhere around noon a servant brings him a tray of finger sandwiches, accompanied by a bowl of soup, but the sight of food clenches his stomach up into knots, and he leaves the offering mostly untouched in favor of continuing to write. There’s no good explanation for that: he’s hungry, but there’s an uneasiness brewing in him, and, by mid-afternoon, it’s grown bad enough that his thoughts begin to scatter, and he’s relieved to reach the end of his work.  
  
It’s only when he’s taken to pacing the room that the source of his unquiet finally pokes through into his awareness: it’s coming to him down the bond.  
  
Erik.  
  
Whatever is going on out in the field, it’s unsettling Erik, and, with the bond held open widely enough to allow Erik to monitor Charles’ emotions, his discontent is leaking along the bond and dropping into Charles’ mind. Too bad the shielding from this morning didn’t hold… which is actually concerning in and of itself. Holding up shields against Erik for long periods of time is proving difficult: not impossible to do, but blocking a bond that’s inside his own head isn’t natural, and a few minutes of drifting concentration opens everything right back up.  
  
And when it _does_ open? It results in this: in feeling Erik’s unease, and the niggling sense of worry that’s coating everything in Erik’s mind at the moment.  
  
 _[Erik?]_  
  
No answer. Nothing except a twitch of recognition and then a tightening of the shields—on Erik’s end. That never happens. Erik never blocks him out. That isn’t what he does, and what does it mean that he’s doing it now?  
  
As the shadows grow longer, the speed of his pacing picks up. The agitation is a persistent itch, filling up the space in his ribs and strangling his breathing, but he doesn’t stop moving. Erik should have been back by now, but there’s no notice: nothing, beyond that strange silence layered with unease.  
  
And then it’s something else entirely.  
  
The first wave of agony hits him squarely in the chest, and he hears himself cry out, but doesn’t truly register it until the floor rushes up to meet him. He’s gone to his knees, smashing his palms down onto the floor. Fallen, like a felled tree, and the pain—it doesn’t hurt, isn’t his, but the ghost of it echoes along his nerves and cries out.  
  
Another pulse of it. That burn, that pressure—what _is_ that? “Erik—“ The bond—it’s coming from the bond. And the bond is Erik. If it hurts, it has to be Erik. There must have been trouble, must have—  
  
Whining, he presses his face down to the floorboards. When Shaw had stabbed him was there a backlash? Had Erik felt this? No, no, of course not, not without a fully formed link. But maybe some of it. Some of—“ _Ah,_ bloody hell, that’s _enough_ ….”  
  
It _is_ : the pain vanishes as quickly as it came, and he’s left with his forehead to the floor, panting for breath and scraping his mind for the threads of the bond. _[Erik? Erik, where are you?]_  
  
There’s a pulse of recognition, and then silence. Another call turns up nothing. Erik is there… but he’s not _there_.  
  
Unconscious? Could be. But he _was_ answering.  
  
Dragging himself to his feet, he stumbles over to the door, as much falling into it as knocking. It takes him a moment to gather his breath and push past the lump in his throat, but he’s not going to get information any other way but through the guard. “Please, is there news?” He slams his hand into the wood again.  
  
There’s the sound of shuffling footsteps outside, and a pause, before: “Nothing new to report, Sir.”  
  
His head drops down to thud against the door. There can’t be nothing. Something’s happened.  
  
“There has to be…” But he isn’t talking to the person beyond the door anymore, and there’s no sense remaining, pounding on wood that won’t give him answers. Though, stepping away is equally as hazardous, when his legs don’t want to hold him, and he more staggers than walks—but the bed is there, ready to catch his fall. Not the first thing of preference—Erik hasn’t had him on _this_ bed yet, but it’s a matter of time—but there’s not much choice at the moment.  
  
Splaying out on the bed, one leg dangling over the side—can’t be bothered to lift it fully, too much work—he closes his eyes and chokes again. The bond is there, and surely if he reaches a little further down it, he’ll find Erik. Hard to do, though, when Erik isn’t lost at all, but merely blocked and unresponsive. It’s right there to push against: a solid mental wall that he throws his mind against over and over, and which feels so much like Erik that it’s maddening—because it _isn’t_ him, or at least not a part of Erik that he can latch onto.  
  
Gods only know how long it lasts. Time is an odd sort of thing when looked at too closely, and worry sharpens it—always has, in his experience—slowing it lest the observer miss any detail. That’s not a mercy, but a unique torture—and by the time there’s the sound of movement in the corridor, he’s worn himself out thrashing against the mental block.  
  
And it doesn’t appear that a reprieve is soon to follow.  
  
The door bursts inward with force enough to carry straight into the wall, where the door slams, unheeded. A handful of men shuffle through, bearing what is easily identifiable as a stretcher. A nice one too, fit for royalty—  
  
Erik.  
  
No, this can’t be right. Erik wouldn’t have—wouldn’t be— “Erik—“ He’s up off the bed and moving, quick enough that the soldier nearest him nearly doesn’t catch him in time to stop him from lunging for the stretcher. “What happened?”  
  
“Charles.” Just his name. But it’s enough to cut the life out of his motion, to make him still in the guard’s hold.  
  
Evidently satisfied that he’s no menace to Erik, the guard lets him go as they settle Erik down onto the bed. “Let him through, damn you.” Erik’s voice is slurred with pain—is that what it is, or has he been drugged?—but it’s strong, and it sounds like him: commanding, a bit of an ass, but laced with strength.  
  
It’s a pity he doesn’t _look_ quite so much like himself: when Charles clambers back over to the bed, and then immediately up onto it, he’s treated to the sight of Erik’s bloodless skin. It’s frankly ghastly against the always-bright color of his eyes. Even his lips are paler than they ought to be. It’s relatively evident why: there’s a great swathe of bandages over his right shoulder, a blot of blood bleeding through at the center.  
  
“What the hell did you _do_?!” Erik’s forehead is cold—too cold, must be the blood loss, but, whatever it is, the chill of it against Charles’ hand leeches out the warmth in his own skin. For godsake, why haven’t they covered Erik up yet? Incompetent fools.  
  
Intimidated, more like: they may as well be faceless, for all the heed they deserve—and that manner of feeling doesn’t typically go unnoted. They must sense the animosity rolling in waves, but checking it would take telepathic effort that’s more trouble than it’s worth. Let them stay there if they like, present at his back, hovering: for all the good they’ve done so far, they might not have bothered to stay at all.  
  
As Charles slides his palm sideways across Erik’s forehead and down his jaw line, pressing his fingers in and levering his head up to get a better look at him, Erik sinks into his touch, smiling faintly. It’s lopsided and weak, but it reaches his eyes. Good. If he’s alive enough to be pleased, he’s not likely to expire anytime soon.  
  
Doubly true if he’s talking—and, now that he’s set about opening his mouth, it seems a miracle that he ever stopped: “Sword wound to shoulder. Too close to the neck for comfort. Won’t be bad to heal up, now that we’ve got the bleeding stopped—but I lost a lot of blood.”  
  
“You wouldn’t _answer_ me.”  
  
“Hard to, when I was bleeding out. Don’t worry: I’ve had a transfusion since then.”  
  
“That isn’t funny, Erik.”  
  
“Wasn’t meant to be. I’m serious: a little sleep is really all I need.”  
  
For someone who isn’t making a joke, Erik is inordinately pleased, and it’s quite a temptation not to snap at him when Erik reaches up, brushing back a piece of hair that’s fallen out of place into Charles’ face. That won’t do: Erik needs to rest, not play about with caresses—though Erik doesn’t seem to agree, judging by the sharp frown that conquers his mouth when Charles reaches up and plucks the hand out of his hair.  
  
Enough of this ridiculousness. “Get out,” he tells the soldiers, holding Erik’s hand firmly down by his side. “I’ll make certain he doesn’t maim himself in any other pointless ventures.”  
  
Times like these are when it’s most infuriating to find that the guards no longer jump to do his bidding. For the love of all that is sacred, he’s not going to murder Erik in his sick bed. Sleeping together every night, it’s not as though there haven’t been opportunities aplenty already.  
  
Once, right when Erik took Westchester, there was the possibility. If he had time to work himself up to it again, that possibility could potentially be rekindled. But it’s all so firmly entrenched in the realm of “if,” and he’s certainly not about to kill Erik _now_. The ridiculous fools—and what good are they, if they couldn’t protect Erik in the first place—ought to know that.  
  
Even _Erik_ obviously knows that.  
  
“Do as he says,” Erik mutters, sliding his eyes closed. Half-unconscious, and he keeps on giving orders. Figures. Fine, though, when they’re the orders Charles wants to hear.  
  
Even so, it rankles that the guards instantly jump to obey. There’s no reason they shouldn’t—more than enough reason why they _should_ —but, damn it, he’s every bit as competent as Erik, and to be so utterly ignored….  
  
Erik’s fingers curl around his hip, digging down into the jut of his hipbone and making him jump. “Wouldn’t have thought you’d care.”  
  
“That my husband has apparently gone and gotten himself skewered? Don’t be stupid. Of course I care.” Erik is—gods, he doesn’t deserve much good at this point.  That’s true. But if Erik died now, accidentally, with no kind of cathartic weight to it, there would never be any closure. Killing Erik himself is different, not better, not worse, but more meaningful. If Erik were to die in a twist of war’s fate while Charles sat back in their room… it’s unthinkable.  
  
If Erik were to die _at all_ —it isn’t unthinkable, exactly, but the longer time stretches on, the more uncomfortable it becomes to consider it.  
  
Erik. Lifeless, cold, dead, and there would be freedom, but _Erik_ ….  
  
Avoiding all thought on the topic is easier, though it became decidedly harder once Erik was carried, bleeding, into their shared bedroom. Blood loss and injury tends to kick death right to the forefront of a person’s brain.  
  
Thankfully, injury also requires treatment, and that’s a fantastic distraction. There’s a cloth around here somewhere—ah, there, and the pitcher of water from lunch, untouched as it is. That will do nicely.  
  
“Not too long ago, you’d have _liked_ to see me dead,” Erik calls after him as Charles rises from the bed, heading off to get the pitcher of water.  
  
“Believe it or not, it was never an especially pleasurable thought. Merely a necessary one.”  
  
A half-formed laugh chases across the room after him. The water in the pitcher has eased to room temperature. That’ll do nicely. Get some of the dust off Erik’s face. He really does look a sight. Did he also roll in the dirt while he was down there on the ground, bleeding out?  
  
“It’s nice to hear you call me ‘husband.’”  
  
What? Had he done that? Yes, actually: _my husband has apparently gone and gotten himself skewered._ Fancy that, acknowledging just how things stand.  
  
If only things were that simple, and—ah, he’s begun to rub his wrist nervously against his hip. Says something, that does. Even though technically the mark is exposed on a daily basis, he’s kept it so carefully covered that it hasn’t been examined much, and it’s easier to imagine he can chafe it right off, as if it had never been there at all.  
  
A ridiculous hope, of course, but that doesn’t curtail the persistent desire to scrub it away.  
  
Erik cheeks tighten, and he frowns. “Don’t do that.”  
  
“I’m not doing anything.” Nothing worth acknowledging, anyway. If Erik would leave the topic alone, focus instead on the pitcher of water that’s just been set on the nightstand, they could pretend there had been nothing at all to notice. “Your face is filthy.”  
  
“It’s not coming off.”  
  
After dipping the cloth into the water, he wrings it out and presses it to Erik’s forehead, moving to sweep down over his cheek and chin. “Of course it’s coming off. Dirt most certainly can’t stay on if you intend to address anyone in public ever again.”  
  
Fingers close around his wrist. For an injured man, Erik is still alarmingly quick in his movements. “ _This,”_ he says, squeezing where his fingers are curled over the mark. _“_ This isn’t coming off. _”_  
  
Bloody inconvenient time for his lungs to suddenly seize up, but there it is, no way around it. And—terrible to get the air in, to push away the image of that mark and the pain that had gone with it. “Let go of me.”  
  
Erik fixes him with a surprisingly clarity-filled stare. “That’s the point. I _never_ want to let go of you. I _love_ you.”  
  
“Stop it. You’re hurt.”  
  
He snorts. “And you like it, don’t you? It’s not a fight like this. _This_ —” Flipping Charles’ wrist over, he traces his fingers over the lettering, pressing his nail down along the looping curves, “doesn’t have to mean a thing, when the person who put it there is at _your_ mercy.”  
  
It’s nowhere near so simple as that—and it’s _his_ turn to snort, though there’s a great deal more derision inherent in his sound than there was in the noise Erik made. Besides that, though—he’s not going to give in to the clenching in his stomach, and that horrible sense of nausea. “You’ve half a battalion of armed guards out in the corridor: I hardly think you’re at my mercy.”  
  
A half-laugh. “No? Well, if you say so.”  
  
It’s not fair. He’s been so careful: long-sleeved shirts whenever possible, simple avoidance when not—it’s done wonders for his denial, but now, with his wrist popped out into his line of vision, there’s nowhere for his gaze to go but down to the dark lettering.  
  
Erik Lehnsherr, printed clearly, and then, beneath that, his signature.  
  
The redness has all-but faded now, with only a tiny hint in the crooks of some of the curved lines. Instead of looking like a wound, it’s become an elegant scrawl across the inside of his wrist, directly over the pulse. His heartbeat, jumping against Erik’s name.  
  
Pretty, if not for the actual meaning.  
  
Turning away, he hides his gaze in the lines of the wall’s wooden paneling and in the clean lines of the door. Distractions are good. Distractions are necessary. Distractions are—anything but Erik, and Erik’s single-minded drive, when he can’t see exactly how much damage he’s causing with his black scrawl of ink and his insistence that he can do as he likes.  
  
“You have three seconds to let go of me before I go find you a nurse and let her clean you up instead.”  
  
The hand drops.  
  
And wouldn’t you just know it: the second Erik’s hand hits the bed, there’s another knock at the door. “For godsake.” Can’t these people run anything on their own? _His_ people were never so helpless. But, because there’s no leaving it, he raises his voice and adds, “It’s open.” Assuming it actually is. The guards could have locked it—though they can just as easily unlock it. Must be nice, to have that kind of power.  
  
The expectation is that it will be someone to see Erik: some poor sod who absolutely needs to see his general before Erik calls it a day, too doped up on painkillers to give commands. Nursing that expectation, it’s with a touch of vindictive pleasure that he picks back up the rag and resumes washing Erik’s face: let them see their general in all his glory, flat on his back with his husband cleaning him up.  
  
“Well, this is unexpectedly domestic.”  
  
No, that can’t be—  
  
He yanks his head around, twinging a few of the muscles in the process. But, no, he’s not mistaken.  
  
Emma Frost.  
  
Of all the people he’s not keen to see, the one who ripped his memories out of his head is relatively high on the list. With any luck, whatever she has to say can be said with speed, and they can save for another day any more awkward meetings in which they sit across from each other making curt small talk and exchanging tidbits of information, all the while hoping the other suffers a spontaneous brain aneurism.  
  
“Oh,” he begins, feigning surprise, though it tastes sour in his mouth, “would you like to take over?” He gestures toward Erik who, despite sliding closer and closer toward unconsciousness with every passing minute, rolls his eyes upward with a truly impressive amount of disdain, “I’m sure one telepath is as good as another.”  
  
Her lips curl, and she plants her hands on her hips, probably readying herself for further scathing—and for the reply that will require of her. Thankfully, whatever she’s about to say is lost when Erik beats her to it, darting out his hand to latch onto Charles’ thigh. “Like hell, Charles,” he snaps. “And play nice: I called her here to brief you. I won’t be in any condition to make the statements myself, and while you can’t address the troops, you can take care of everything else.”  
  
For the space of a few breaths, he’s stunned enough that he doesn’t move. It’s Erik’s hand, squeezing his thigh, that jolts him out of it.  
  
 _Can_ take care of everything else? Well, yes, in the sense that, while it’s pushing societal convention, it’s… not explicitly forbidden. A bearer, speaking on behalf of his lord to a region’s citizens? Racy, bound to cause the stirrings of scandal, but it will mostly just label Erik as progressive. It might actually help his image in the long run: distance him from Shaw, paint a picture of him as a truly new monarch, illustrate that they’re moving into a new era….  
  
Speaking to the military is, of course, out of the question. A bearer knows nothing about warfare—or _should_ know nothing, and the fact that he _does_ … people would prefer to forget it and to go on operating as if he’s as ignorant as they are.  
  
“Are you all right to be left alone?”  
  
“As you pointed out,” Erik drawls, waving his hand dismissively, “I have a sizable contingent of guards in the hallway. It won’t be any trouble for Frost to take you to the sitting room and brief you while I sleep.”  
  
Trouble, no, but it’s nothing short of a miracle that Erik would allow it. Though, that may not be the pinnacle of accuracy: Erik sent him off to Genosha with Logan, and the other day in the camp he was foisted off on Frost too. It may be a matter of Erik feeling secure in the knowledge that the person he’s chosen to babysit his husband is utterly unlikely to help Charles escape.  
  
Not very risky of him, to only gamble on the likes of Frost and Logan.  
  
“Fine. Don’t move your shoulder, and, if, for whatever reason, you open the wound again, don’t assume it will clot on its own: call for someone immediately.” Erik knows all this, but it’s comforting to say it—but he can’t linger forever, and with one last swipe to collect the rest of the dirt, he drops the cloth into the now-clouded water of the pitcher and, wiping his hands on the sheets, stands up. “Shall we?”  
  
Frost shrugs. “After you.”  
  
She can’t mean that—not when Erik has more or less set her on guard duty. He won’t be picking the setting today, nor any day in the near future, unless most everything changes.  
  
There’s one last brush against his mind—lingering, affectionate—before he slips out the door, Frost in his wake, shutting Erik away to take a nap. Honestly, it’s foolish to worry for him: he’ll have a good long sleep, and, as he says, there are guards outside if he needs anything. He hardly needs to be monitored while he lies there.  
  
Besides, there are bigger concerns at the moment: Frost isn’t the sort of figure to be encountered when half his mind is back in the bedroom with his husband. Case in point: there’s obviously a reason she’s letting him lead, and it’s better to figure it out now rather than later, when she’ll be looking to turn it to her advantage.  
  
Unfortunately, whether or not he’s leading toward the sitting room—and regardless of her motives for letting him do so—there’s no question that Frost is the one heading the situation. Every guard they pass nods to her, and there are no questions asked: Erik must have made her task clear to a large number of people, or at least to people who would _tell_ a large number of people.  
  
Either that, or it really would be this easy to compel the mind of a guard and waltz out of here as though he were simply on a stroll with a soldier to watch over him.  
  
Granted, that’s assuming that Erik wouldn’t notice if he took over someone’s mind—and that’s about as unlikely as Erik leaving him alone without explicitly locking up his telepathy first, or leaving him with someone who can block him out.  
  
“How did he get that wound?” he asks, surprised at the exhaustion in his own voice. He holds the door to the sitting room open for her, though she refuses to precede him, thinning her mouth into a wickedly amused twist and shaking her head, nodding for him to go first.  
  
If they haven’t entered the room yet and they’re already poised to fight, this promises to be a long conversation: it’s the lesser of the two evils to go first and to allow her to close the door after she too has slipped inside.  
  
“Once he’d secured the city itself, Lehnsherr led a party out after those who had taken advantage of the surrender as an opportunity to pinpoint exactly where his troops would be.” Her lips twist tighter. “As you can see, your husband found them.”  
  
Despite a desire to continue to pace, he perches himself on one of the loveseats, gesturing for her to take the chair opposite. She does, with a little flourish of leg, one crossing over the other with a needless bounce. “And?”  
  
“And while he was reasonably successful, it involved actual combat: the rebels were better prepared than he’d hoped, and they were able, when cornered, to mount something resembling a defense, while what we can only assume were their families—or possibly those behind the operation—retreated under their cover. It involved a large degree of close combat, and Lehnsherr, fool that he is, hasn’t quite learned yet how to let people watch his back.”  
  
That’s not true at all: he knew precisely how to let _Charles_ watch his back. But, if there’s no one he trusts at present, then he _is_ dangerously prone to trying to go it on his own and hoping for the best. Diving straight into the fray where he shouldn’t go alone sounds exactly like something Erik would do.  
  
“That’s a rather disrespectful way to refer to your commander.”  
  
One of her dainty eyebrows arches. “Going to tell on me, Xavier?”  
  
“I could, if I were hoping to get you sacked. Which, let’s be honest, I am.”  
  
There’s no reason that should make her laugh, and, yet, she _does_ , and he could swear she’s almost _delighted_. For someone who’s facing reprimand, she’s unusually unworried, body language and all: propping her hands on her knee, she leans forward a little. “Zero Seven, Zero Six, Seventeen Zero Three.”  
  
The world rocks on its base.  
  
It’s gradual at first, like the ground disintegrating under him—if the ground were his mind, and his mind were composed solely of his memories. Everything drops out from under him and, just as he begins to fall, it rushes back up beneath him, catching his feet with force enough to crumple his legs under him.  
  
By the time he’s back standing, everything has re-aligned, and there’s a very… _subversive_ memory of him, Ororo, and Frost.  
  
They’re planning a godsdamned overthrow. And it’s been hidden in his mind this whole time.  
  
This is… insanity. Practical, vicious insanity. He’s been living the last few days with an idea so different—been basing his decisions on the reality that, right now, he has nothing with which to counter Erik, and all this time he’s had this kicking around in the back of his brain, blocked off by Frost’s telepathy.  
  
He—he’s been working with Erik, trying to compromise with him, because that was all that was left, and this whole time—this has been lurking _the whole time_.  
  
Swallowing down the stickiness in his throat, he raises his chin and looks up at Frost. His breathing is slowing, back under control where it ought to be. Much better. He—whatever this is, he can do this.  
  
“I thought you were leaving for Westchester.” That’s quite a victory, keeping his voice so even. Well done, him.  
  
“At the turn of the week. In the meantime, Lehnsherr ordered me to brief you, and why turn down an opportunity?”  
  
“I suppose we’d better seize them while they come: after today, who knows how many others will come about.”  
  
Frost shrugs. “It’s not as bad as it seems. He has the city, yes, but most of Westchester’s citizenship is outside the town walls, as you well know. Right now they’re formed in fractured bands of war-leaders: give them a leader to unite behind, and Lehnsherr won’t be able to hold the capital for long.”  
  
True, though there’s no telling how much good that will actually do. At the moment, Westchester is bordered on the south by Hartford and in the north by Boston and the Upper North: all of which are lands that Erik controls. If they have to fight on two fronts, they’ll be spread thin. “You know we’ll have to take the Upper North too.”  
  
“Easily done, actually: the supply lines run through Westchester. Take those out, and his army is cut off. We’ll be able to surround them and stamp them out.”  
  
Yes, and then it will be a matter of holding the border—easier said than done when it’s miles long, much of it in wilderness territory. Keeping Erik’s soldiers out will be the same impossibility as it was before: they’ll sneak in somewhere, congregate, and then storm Westchester.  
  
Frost must know what he’s thinking, or else she’s thought this through the same as he has. What a frightening thought. “This time we’ll bring the fight to him: if we’re sending troops to attack _his_ cities, he won’t have the resources to push Westchester’s borders like he did last time.”  
  
It might work. There are a thousand things that could go wrong, but… Erik has rather a large number of obstacles to contend with too.  
  
Lest she somehow catch on to his misgivings, he melts into the sofa, forcing his shoulder blades down into the closest approximation of relaxation that he can achieve for now. “Well. I do believe we’ve a good enough plan to be getting on with. And I don’t flatter myself in thinking that you needed me to work the rest of that out. So, truly this time, Frost: _why_ are you here?”  
  
For a woman able to turn into diamond, she’s remarkably fluid at times: she dips down a shoulder in a slow roll of movement, low enough that the front of her shirt pinches up and forms a gap, providing a lovely view straight down her cleavage.  
  
He wasn’t lying when he told Erik he likes women—and, whether or not he finds Frost personally appealing, that is a truly spectacular view.  
  
But… no thank-you. Frost is the sort of woman who does nothing for free, and she’s a fool is she thinks a pair of breasts—no matter how fantastic—will be enough to earn her a swathe of blackmail material to take back to Erik if she so pleases. And why would she consider that a viable idea to begin with? If it’s something she could hold over _his_ head, it’s doubly something he can hold over _hers_. If Erik were ever to find out he’d slept with Emma Frost…  
  
His life would doubtless take a turn for the very unpleasant, but at least he’d still be alive to live it. The same cannot be guaranteed for Frost.  
  
“Not interested,” he says, fixing her with a tight smile and keeping his gaze upward of her neck. “You may as well button up.”  
  
From the sheer number of teeth she flashes at him, one would think she’s actually impressed by that. Who knows? She very well might be. “So enamored of your husband?”  
  
So _that_ is what she’s after. “If you’d like to know details about my marriage, you’d do better to ask.” It would be a far sight better than taking off her clothes in hopes he’ll show his hand—which, in telling her to keep them on, it would seem that he has. “I’m beginning to get the sense that offering sex is a sort of litmus test you give to just about every man—and probably some women—you encounter.”  
  
Clever of her, in a way. Either she quickly obtains a hold over her opponent, or she learns something about them.  
  
“You can’t blame me for wanting to know whether, if it comes down to it, you’ll have what it takes to destroy him,” she counters, shrugging and picking at the hem of her jacket.  
  
Something about that makes the fabric under his own hands itch; gripping down on the sofa cushions doesn’t alleviate the irritation. “I don’t want to destroy Erik: I want to destroy what he’s trying to _do_.”  
  
“And if it turns out you can’t end one without the other?”  
  
“I doubt you’d understand the concept of loyalty, Frost.” He flicks his finger against the arm of the chair: it releases a handful of pent-up energy, but the sting isn’t worth it. “Seeing as you learned your version from _Shaw_. But, occasionally, it isn’t so easy as a ‘yes’ or a ‘no.’”  
  
 _There_ is the concept so reflected in her last name: if looks controlled the climate, they’d be in the midst of a Northern winter. “Don’t pretend to know anything about my relationship to Shaw.”  
  
Up until now, she’s appeared quite comfortable, appropriating the chair as a throne of her own from which she can hold court, with him as her audience: may as well try to return the favor, act out a meeting of royalty, if you will. A little more difficult for him to cross his legs—more of a sprawl, seated deep into the sofa—but it comes off all right, and it prompts her to stiffen further. Good enough, then. “I’m more inclined to say your relationship _with_ Shaw.”  
  
Any further out of that chair and she’ll tip forward onto the floor. “Do you _like_ it, Xavier, when he fucks you?”  
  
Oh. _Well_.  
  
Don’t react—don’t—don’t, and, no, he won’t. She can only shame him if he lets her. _Don’t_ react. Better yet, turn it around, _use_ it, and don’t _think_. “Yes. I do. Did you like it when _Shaw_ fucked _you_?” Same as watching milk drain from a hole in a saucepan: the blood leaves her face so quickly that it’s a wonder she keeps her wits about her.  
  
There’s a space of a moment when every indication foretells that she’ll go for his throat. Two seconds more, and she might have, but that isn’t helpful to either of them, and there’s a better payoff in rising from the sofa and casually strolling around behind it, before she can launch at him. A fight isn’t the goal here: information _is_. “My point—“ And this is key: if done badly, things will only sour further: “My _point_ is that we both do what we need to do. _Now_ : you know very well why I am in the position that I am in. However, _I_ do not know why you were in Shaw’s… _company_ when he was married and had what the world thought was a bearer. I _could_ assume that the answer is as simple as it seems at first glance, but I prefer to give you the benefit of the doubt. So, do enlighten me: until you do, I have no reason to trust anything else you have to say. A person’s motives are the foundation, after all.” Erik would sneer dreadfully at the pedantic nature of that tone. Though, he never really talks to Erik that way, does he? His critique of Erik’s actions is more direct. Less condescending.  
  
The reasons for why are best left unexplored.  
  
It’s telling that she can’t convince herself to remain sitting when he stands: she locks her knees and glides to her feet, dipping a hip and sliding to the side. If she wanted, she could turn the position into one primed to give her a good boost in springing at him.  
  
Something to look forward to, then.  
  
“You ought to know better than anyone, Xavier, that sometimes you get in too far to dig your way out again.”  
  
That’s not an answer that tells much of anything at all. “You aren’t a bearer: you weren’t bonded to him. I can’t think what else would force you to stay put.” Brushing his fringe back out of his face, he lays his hands down on the back of the sofa and waits. With Erik asleep, time is on his side: she’ll have to be the one to lead him out of here, and, if she were to do so now, it would look an awful lot like defeat.  
  
Check. Time to go for mate.  
  
She scowls. “You think a bond is the only way of keeping someone where they don’t want to be? Sugar, if I’d left him, there would have been nowhere I could have hidden. I knew too much. He’d either have dragged me back, or he’d have had me killed. To this day, I’m not sure which it would have been.”  
  
As if he hadn’t already known Shaw was a disgusting individual. Erik—damn it, but Erik has his moments when the brokenness that is an inextricable part of him peers through the cracks, and he _can_ be cruel, but it’s mostly through a lack of thought, and it _isn’t_ the same. If she can’t be sure whether or not Shaw would have killed her, that broadcasts the sum of their relationship effectively enough right there.  
  
Erik would _never_ kill him. Drag him back, yes, but it wouldn’t—it would _not_ be like what she’s suggesting _Shaw_ would have done. Horrible, perhaps, but not sadistic.  
  
“And why not a knife to the heart, then? You had ample opportunity, I’m sure.”  
  
“Not as many as you’d think,” she admits bitterly, flipping a lock of hair over her shoulder. Though she likely doesn’t mean to betray it, there’s a slight tremor to her hand. “He was careful. And, anyway...” Breathing out long and low, she turns her face away, languidly dropping her arm to dangle over the backrest of the chair, bouncing her hand dismissively as she stares out the window. “You’ll drive yourself mad, thinking on what could be. If you haven’t figured that out yet, you will.”  
  
“Charmingly put. And Ororo? You said you owe her a debt, though you never explained what that was.”  
  
“I don’t see how that’s your business.”  
  
“It wouldn’t be, except you’re asking me to trust you. I prefer to know exactly whom I’m in bed with, and that means knowing their motivations. Frankly, at the moment, I’m working with you on Ororo’s word alone.”  
  
“Then _keep_ relying on her word,” she snarls, elegant features twisting up into something animalistic. She’d rip his throat out with those pretty little teeth if she got the chance. “In the meantime, since you’re so eager to be intimately acquainted with your bed partners, I’ll take you back to your husband.”  
  
“You are _awfully_ fixated on what I get up to with Erik.”  
  
Planting her hand on the chair, she grinds her dainty little fingers down into the padding, lodging those perfectly manicured nails against the grain of the velvet upholstery. “You’re a disgrace to anyone who’s ever been in your situation, Xavier. You’d defend him—”  
  
The anger is contagious: his own hand also bears down on the sofa under his grip. “Hardly. He’s put me in an untenable situation, and there are aspects of it that I’ll never live down.” Unprovoked, the bonding mark throbs at his wrist. “But I’ve seen his memories: I know why he’s done what he’s done, and I’m not willing to indiscriminately vilify him. There _is_ good in him.”  
  
She whistles out a breath, sneering. “And, what? You think getting on your back and spreading your legs for him is going to help him find that good?”  
  
“It may surprise you to know, Love, that I wasn’t given much of a choice.”  
  
Somewhere along the line, his chest has tightened up, and the skin of his face has heated. The flush must be all the way up his neck, rounding out nicely in his cheeks.  
  
Frost doesn’t answer right away. She continues to watch him, following him with eyes lined for definition—her make-up is impeccable, war zone or not—and that blaze blue with undisguised loathing. Whatever he’s done to make her hate him, nothing she’s offered so far is explanation enough; there’s more to root through, though not today. But, whatever she hates him for, it’s boiled her down to the sum of her loathing.  
  
Though… perhaps _he_ isn’t the one whom she hates.  
  
Once the idea has formed in his mind, it lodges, stubbornly fixed. That should have occurred sooner. Such an oversight—but it’s not as though she’s given him an overabundance of clues.  
  
“What has Erik done to make you hate him so much?”  
  
Bulls-eye: like banking a fire, her anger roars up through her restraint, smashing down the stillness she’d been clinging onto. Tossing her arm off the chair, she stomps out from behind it and jerks her head violently in the direction of the door. “Move.”  
  
“Sending me back to Erik so soon?” All those times people told him he’s the picture of innocence with a boyish face and guileless blue eyes—hard to see how, when the innocence lacing his voice is so patently false. The pretense is unsustainable under the weight of curiosity: “I’ll ask you again: what did Erik do?” She’s already admitted that Erik is blackmailing her, but whatever it is that he’s using as leverage, it’s becoming increasingly clear she hates him for it. It’s _personal._ This isn’t just about what Erik has done to the regions: for Frost, it’s about what he’s done to _her._  
  
“Your husband is every inch as talented an extortionist as Shaw ever was, Xavier, and if you want to know more about it than that, I suggest you ask him.”  
  
“I won’t remember this conversation.”  
  
“I’ll re-write you a set of memories that lets you know to ask.”  
  
And with the venom she’s spitting out, what a pleasant set that promises to be. “Yes. I recall that you told me that last time too. Erik and I haven’t gotten around to discussing it yet.” That’s one way of putting it—though definitely not the most truthful. “Anyway, I’d prefer that _you_ tell me.”  
  
Too bad that Frost doesn’t have much care for his preferences, unless it means avoiding their fulfillment. “You say you like to know the people you’re in bed with,” she says, circumventing anything resembling an answer. “Misconceptions are such a drag, wouldn’t you say?”  
  
“Oh, completely. It’s so relieving to know that _our_ relationship isn’t built on any such misunderstandings.” Erik once told him that sarcasm must have been his birthright: days like today, that almost feels true.  
  
This time, she doesn’t answer, but only tilts her head, setting her hair to flopping, though she pushes it back out of her face, motion smooth and sure, shored up by the remnants of her tattered poise. The number of people who have managed to rattle Emma Frost is, in all likelihood, quite small.  
  
Oddly, it’s not an attainment that brings much joy.  
  
Moving out from behind the sofa, he follows her to the door. “If we’re done for the day…”  
  
“I’ll implant the details of the attack and aftermath into your mind,” she says, waving him off. Stopping at the door, she squares up, as though she’s half expecting that he’ll try to run out before she’s able to cover things up.  
  
Not likely. This is one conversation that would be _hell_ for Erik to see.  
  
“Until the next time then,” he murmurs, half-bowing, and—goodness, that amount of vitriol can’t be good for her features. Just having it there on her face is liable to curdle the skin. “Do have a lovely trip to Genosha.”  
  
And, after that, the world just fades away.  
  
It’s nice, in a way.  
  
Or it would be, if he could remember it.


	30. Chapter 30

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a long one! So, here: have some sex, and some answers, and some... well, saying might spoil the surprise, but most of you have been begging for this event since the beginning, so hopefully it'll live up to expectations.

Erik’s assessment of the wound turns out to be accurate: the placement was such that it nicked the wrong place—gods know, arteries and veins are damnably vulnerable, when one gets to thinking about it—resulting in a lot of very rapid blood loss. The cut itself, however, is a clean one, and, thankfully, once sewn shut, it heals fast and relatively cleanly. Erik will wear a scar from it permanently, but it promises to be a mild one.  
  
That doesn’t discount the sheer amount of work that Erik’s body needs to do to heal: it’s no real surprise that he requires quite a lot of sleep. Not enough, unfortunately: a week or so after Erik received the wound, he’s already itching to be back on his feet, heedless of popping his stitches.  
  
And a bored Erik? Is a curious Erik. Every detail of Charles’ briefings has been examined with such scrutiny that he’s ceased telling Erik what it was he said this time out on that balcony when he’d spoken to the surrendering residents of the inner city, and has begun to let Erik recount the words back to him instead. Erik’s accuracy is, unsurprisingly for someone with such a sharp mind and the leisure to use it, impressively high, and he’s indicated that he’s pleased with how things went.  
  
Pleased enough, evidently, that he’s deemed it necessary to listen to more of Charles’ monologues. Though, one does have to hand it to him: Erik is showing genuine interest toward the information currently being imparted about Westchester’s rose gardens.  
  
Or, he was.  
  
Interest remains, but it has slowly begun turning toward another target—and one that is, by now, so perpetually predictable that there’s nothing to do but sigh when it becomes undeniable that Erik has begun looking at _him_ and not the roses.  
  
A few weeks ago, he might have tried to ignore it—to brush Erik off and turn back to the flowers, perhaps even continue his lecture and then berate Erik when he inevitably discards even the pretense of being interested in the roses. Now, the weight of the sheer pointlessness of that endeavor squeezes out any hope of success before the attempt is made.  
  
Straightening up from where he’s bent over one of the roses on the lower branches—a lovely specimen, and it’s a pity Erik isn’t more interested—he wipes his hands off on his trousers and thins out his lips. “The answer is no.” He’s put a lot of time into these roses, and though Erik might not be interested, he could at least leave well enough alone and allow the individuals who _are_ intrigued to have the time to examine these top-notch specimens.  
  
Erik doesn’t even go through the effort of pretending they don’t both know what this is about. There would be no point: the hunger that’s flushing his features is unmistakable, and there’s a flare of lust nudging at the barrier of the bond. “It’s been a week.”  
  
And so it has. But, for the majority of that, Erik has been flat on his back in bed, too drugged with painkillers to have much need for sex beyond the occasional rush of desire when Charles had slid into bed with him to sleep, or, often, in the mornings, when Charles begins to wake, only to find Erik combing fingers through his sleep-tangled hair and singing that haunting song that belongs to a language Charles doesn’t understand.  
  
“You’re in no condition—”  
  
“For anything overly strenuous. That’s right. But—“ One would think he’s scouting out a battleground, the way he rakes his eyes over the rows of bushes, perusing the entrance to the gardens and, apparently deciding on what angle he thinks will most effectively obscure them from view, latches the hand of his good arm onto Charles’ wrist and draws him through a rose archway—it took the better part of a year to successfully achieve the exact strain of rose that looked just right on that arch—and into a boxed-in area of the garden. “I think I can handle what I have in mind.”  
  
This place, then. A place that Charles used to go to read, and, in the early days of the war, before it felt wrong somehow, to plan out his strategies. Hours upon hours have been wiled away in this spot.  
  
And now he’s probably about to find himself on his back in the grass.  
  
Luckily, it’s a warm day. Autumn being what it is, there’s never any guarantee. As it is, the chill isn’t going to be exactly pleasant.  
  
“As invested in these plants as you are, I would think you’d find a certain… ambiance out here,” Erik presses on, almost wheedling in his tone.  
  
There _is_ a favorable atmosphere out here. Which is why he once had sex with Moira on a clear summer’s night, a few feet to the right of where they’re currently standing.  
  
Not that Erik needs to know that.  
  
And not that Erik seems to care to know _anything_ at the moment… beyond the lure of his husband’s body. How predictable. And, because the doctors have strapped the arm attached to Erik’s injured shoulder directly to his chest to prevent movement and a potential tearing of the stitches, only one arm is threaded into his jacket. It’s the matter of a few quick movements before Erik can pull it off.  
  
Not much question what Erik has in mind, tossing his jacket down on the ground like that. So much for subtlety.  
  
“Would you like me to lie down and spread my legs while you get on with it, or were you hoping to at least pretend you have more respect for me than that?” he asks dryly, casting his eyes over the jacket. Better than the ground, yes, but—  
  
“You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do.”  
  
What?  
  
But Erik’s face is guileless, and his grip is soft—just the brush of his fingertips, sneaking up to close around Charles’ wrist. The point of contact falls between the two of them, held there, suspended, and—he can’t think, can’t—what is Erik doing?  
  
This isn’t how it always goes.  
  
“That’s our agreement, remember?” Erik presses, cocking his head and wrinkling his nose. Not confusion, but… something resembling affection. More than resembling, actually: Erik peers at him with easiness in his eyes and a gentle fondness loosening his stance.  
  
“Stipulating twice a week is hardly—“  
  
One slow slide of movement, and Erik glides in closer, grip releasing in favor of exploring around, slipping up under the fabric that it finds—the hem of Charles’ jacket—and mapping out a trail over muscle and bone. “Yes. But, if you were to tell me to stop, right now, I would. We’d try again later today. But if you can’t manage now, we’ll wait.”  
  
“I can _manage_ fine.” Tempting, to tug away from Erik, but—that _smile,_ and the genuine warmth in his gaze… it’s hypnotic.  
  
This can stop, anytime he wants it to stop. It will happen later, but, for now….  
  
Of all the ridiculous things, leaning up to kiss Erik—but his body goes of its own accord, and he shuffles forward, knocking their feet together. It’s difficult not to feel a tiny bit unsettled when pressed against someone larger than himself. Do women experience this too? Or—it’s also thrilling, being engulfed, swallowed up in that loose, one-armed hold. Maybe women like that. Moira always said she did, although he wasn’t strikingly larger than she was.  
  
Maybe _he_ likes it.  
  
Gods only know why Erik has taken on passivity today. Though, that’s rather generous to say: he’s… _not_. Not passive in any of the ways that count. This, though, to control the kiss, to lick at the side of Erik’s mouth and then in, over the slickness of his teeth, going deeper and sucking on Erik’s tongue—if this is what he can have, things make a little more sense. No, it isn’t control, not a mastery of the situation, but rather indulgence, Erik letting him explore, while he sits back and holds things together.  
  
Erik owns the situation—but there’s something to be said for being able to play with what’s being given.  
  
“Always thought you’d be a good kisser,” he mutters out into the underside of Erik’s chin once he’s pulled back and ducked lower, nudging under Erik’s jaw with his nose until Erik tips his head back, exposing his throat for a thorough perusal. Every inch, scoured with lips and kisses, nips, and an occasional dab of tongue.  
  
“Glad to pass muster.”  
  
“In this case? You _do_.”  
  
Enough that he goes back to kissing Erik, chasing after his tongue when Erik slides it to the side of his mouth, making room for Charles. But of course Erik can’t cede control completely, and it’s little wonder when there’s a sudden tug at the back of his shirt, up and off his skin, the swift rush of air the only warning he gets before Erik’s hand tickles up his back, dancing his fingers over the flesh and tapping out imaginary rhythms over the bumps of his spine.  
  
Oh—and—what—no, absolutely not, _no_ — “Erik!”  
  
But Erik’s already gone and done it by the time he protests: leg hooked around behind Charles. One quick nudge knocks in the back of his knees, taking his legs out from under him and pitching him backward, straight down into Erik’s hold. A one handed hold, that _isn’t_ safe, damn it, not—but Erik has him square in the middle of his back, upper arm around his waist and lower arm pressed up the length of his spine, hand splayed wide at the base of his neck: the hold is secure. Anyway, the fall isn’t very far at all, but—sudden movement like that, it always catches in the throat, incites panic. Hands, jumping up to Erik’s shoulders, clinging—can’t be helped.  
  
All the more reason to latch on, when Erik lowers him backward—still kissing him, the daft sod—and deposits him on top of the jacket that he’d laid out in the grass.  
  
One armed. Because Erik always must show off.  
  
“I—you are _mad_ —“  
  
Mad, no doubt, and going crazier by the second, when Erik drops down on top of him, half on his side, already laughing before Charles finishes speaking.  
  
“I could have fallen!”  
  
“I wouldn’t have let you fall.” Insane. Completely insane. But Erik believes things so ardently that it’s difficult not to fall right in along with him based on sheer contagious feeling.  
  
“You are—“  
  
“Wonderful, I know.” Not quite what he was going for, and if that cocky smirk gets any wider—  
  
It doesn’t. Not because Erik checks his ego—gods forbid—but because he tugs himself up Charles’ body and dives back in for another kiss, nudging his way in with his tongue and unrelenting affection, give or take a few nips when he doesn’t immediately gain compliance. That’s distracting—terribly distracting—but there goes his jacket, the buttons on his shirt—why did he wear a button up and not something more complicated? And then the clasp on his trousers too.  
  
Subtle, Erik is not.  
  
But—there’s an organic allure to the sensation of grass under his palms. With one arm arching over his head and grabbing a fistful of grass, each little bit of earth scrapes over his fingers, catching hold. It’s nothing like the skin of Erik’s shoulder under his shirt—clamping down on that with the other hand, regardless of _too much_ —and different is good, different is something that holds no memories of why this didn’t go well before, or how he couldn’t go through with it, or how he _did_.  
  
But the memories always linger. He never touched the grass that other night—  
  
No, no, no. Not when Erik—not when—not ever. Not now. Don’t think about it now.  
  
He can’t; he’s torturing himself with it.  
  
“Faster,” he snaps, reaching down and yanking Erik’s shirt out of his trousers. Erik takes that as some sort of invitation and kicks off his boots, shucking his trousers and undergarments directly after, all in one go.  
  
From last week’s fighting to _this_. It shouldn’t be like this, wanting one moment, appalled the next. That isn’t sane. And… there’s no sane explanation, not a thing that could pass for it, though _this_ isn’t trying with any real determination. Lying back and spreading his legs doesn’t answer questions.  
  
“May I, Charles?” Erik grinds out, strained with the effort of holding himself back. But he’s _asking._  
  
Oh, but don’t lie now. Don’t make it harder than it has to be. “You aren’t really asking.” And he’s not really saying “no.” Not with his hand on Erik’s shoulder, and his back curving up, driving his shoulders into the ground and grinding his hips against bone and firm flesh.  
  
“Don’t you—“ A lingering, scraped-raw cry—his own—and Erik’s fingers notching against his hipbone. “Don’t you _want_ me to ask?”  
  
“Don’t _lie_ to me.”  
  
No choice where there isn’t one, if you please, not if it’s going to be yanked away again. Not if—one thrust, two, rolling his hips into Erik and biting off a cry that trickles through anyway.  
  
“’m _not_ lying.”  
  
The sound Erik makes when he finally gets his hand down inside Charles’ trousers is filthy, bordering on obscene. No, not bordering—bowling straight over the border. That still doesn’t satisfy, and it’s a matter of seconds before Erik is back to tearing at the fabric, practically heedless of bone and skin that might be in the way. It dawns on Erik halfway through that he can tear them off if there were no shoes in the way, and he switches direction long enough to tug the boots off Charles’ feet and to toss them aside before going back to work on the trousers.  
  
Tenacity is his friend, though, and the trousers are quickly a distant memory, tossed off to the side along with the undergarments.  
  
Bracing his one good hand on the ground, Erik swings his weight back up, planting a knee on either side of Charles’ hips. So, yes: lie back and let Erik do as he pleases, and what if he asked to stop, right now?  
  
Erik would stop. He said he would.  
  
But he’d start up again later.  
  
“Get _on_ with it.” Sounds angry—is he angry? Erik offered a choice. There was—he stopped last time. There was crying and— _oh_. Right. _Right._  
  
That’s… what this is. Erik, trying to avoid that again. What the bloody hell—? Erik—honestly, that’s—that’s just—sensation and anger, messing around together. “A little warning next time,” he gasps, bucking up into Erik’s mouth where it’s curled around his cock.  
  
Not what he was expecting. But good. Miles beyond good.  
  
Where did Erik learn—? Not important. That tongue—that _tongue_ is important. Tickling along the underside of his cock, drawing back to swirl at the tip, on the cusp of suction. Make that _full_ suction, with Erik drawing back and hollowing out his cheeks, rubbing the inside of one cheek against the tip of Charles’ cock before going back to sucking straight on.  
  
One touch, then: his fingers dance along the side of Erik’s face, nails catching on stubble and skin, smoothing along in a slow drag. Like the first night, when Erik got him off, relaxed him enough to fuck him. Gods, so good, this wet heat, Erik’s hand under his lower back, holding him bent off the ground.  
  
If this is Erik relaxing him, playing off what he knows works, then so long as he doesn’t stop, it’ll be all right. “Don’t stop. Don’t ever stop—“ No—out loud, really? It wasn’t meant to be.  
  
Erik doesn’t stop. He bobs his head up and down, encasing the length in undulating waves of heat that tip Charles to the point of madness, until he’s keening high in his throat and plucking fistfuls of grass out of the earth, scattering the blades aside when he unclenches his fingers and smacks at the ground. Both hands now—he’ll be so dirty when this is done.  
  
Erik—please, Erik, don’t let go. It’s not supposed to be scary, but this isn’t safety, and the ground promises to drop out from under him at any moment, for no other reason than _that’s how it is now._  
  
He comes with a cry, raking it through the air around him. Erik—no idea how he does it, but he swallows it all, throat working a few times to get it all down, and then pulling off with an obscene _pop_. And wouldn’t you know it? He comes up grinning, every inch the cat who got the cream.  
  
Well, man, as it were.  
  
“That was—mmm, very good, thank you, I—“ Nothing more than a string of babble and after-orgasm nonsense. With any sense, he’d close his mouth and keep it shut, go silent when Erik works his hand free and leans up, scooting forward on his hand and knees.  
  
A lack of perception can be forgiven on account of drowsiness, yes? So stupid, not realizing why Erik is up between his legs, pushing his thighs apart, but he’s languid, head lolling to the side in the grass, taking in the sight of his jacket, lying a foot or so away, discarded in the first initial rush.  
  
How odd: the picture bows in and out, lengthening and widening, before jumping, razor sharp, back into focus. But he’s waking up to find fingers inside him, two pushed in to the hilt, and Erik’s palm flat against him.  
  
This is happening.  
  
Easy, breathe: remember they’ve done this before, on the wedding night, on the train. The train was good. The train was… easy. He hadn’t thought about it, but had only let Erik touch, before things tied up in knots and he’d flipped over to thinking _too_ much.  
  
“Go on. ‘M fine.”  
  
“Mmm, feels it,” Erik agrees from above him. “Nice and wet. Just wanted to make sure.”  
  
Was that—was that why he’d gone with oral first? There’s a snatch of an anatomy lesson there, lingering, if he wants to bother to grasp it. An orgasm triggers relaxation and arousal, and that stimulates the glands, starts up lubrication. Makes actual reproductive sex easier.  
  
Evidently satisfied, Erik settles back onto his knees. The angle isn’t quite right, but it’ll improve once Erik pushes up into him. Damn it all, why not _do_ it? Why wait, drawing this out?  
  
He could go insane from this alone: from the pulsing of his opening and the humming in his flesh, jumping to sing along with any kind of stimulation. The air alone is enough. He wants it, and what does that make him? Hating it is easier, so much—  
  
Erik pushes forward, sinking into him, and he can’t think, can’t breathe, can’t do more than clench his teeth and buck up, curling his toes, driving them into the ground. Might as well pour hot liquid up inside of him, set him on fire. But fire doesn’t feel like this, good, like a curl of pleasure, eating up his insides and consuming him. Nothing but a pile of ash when this is done, but he’ll keep on screaming.  
  
It would help if there were something to hold, if he could get it… He smacks his arm out to the side, catching the edge of his jacket. There, right there, past the wool and the dirt clinging to it, down in the pocket.  
  
He closes his hands around the chess piece tucked away—and doesn’t let go.  
  
“Look at me.”  
  
The prospect of disobeying disintegrates when Erik screws into him, lighting up his nerves. Whether he’s looking because he meant to, or because he can’t keep his eyes closed—doesn’t much matter. Erik’s gaze is wide and open, dripping mangled awe that seems a touch pained, a touch guilty, but so absurdly reverent that it’s terrifying.  
  
Tipping forward, Erik catches himself on his elbow, laying them chest-to-chest, his shirt riding up nearly to his shoulders. As close as they are, when Erik swivels his hips, dragging circles counter-clockwise, every inch of him scrapes their skin together, smearing sweat between them. It’s messy and slippery, and, trying to gain a little leverage, he hooks his legs around behind Erik, bracketing him in and driving ankles into his back, yanking him closer.  
  
“Yes, darling, whatever you want, what do you want, Charles? Tell me, tell me—“  
  
Only a stream of syllables. It shouldn’t sound so good.  
  
What he wants. Anything he wants. Sex is _his_. Sex is his directions and his commands, and Erik _listens._  
  
 _“Harder.”_  
  
And Erik does. Harder than he ever would have done without prompting, but it feels _fantastic_. All the hurt and anger and tension of the last few weeks bursting out in physical form, and, like this, he can cry out, can hit at things, and no one worries that there’s anything wrong, or that he’s going crazy. This is release. There are pebbles and dirt scrapping up his back where Erik’s jacket has bunched up and stopped protecting him, and Erik is rocking him precisely down into that mess with each thrust, but more is good, more is the only thing he wants.  
  
“Erik—“ Whined out in the back of his throat—but he can feel Erik sweating under his hand. Touch more, keep on touching, one hand up through Erik’s hair, counter to the right direction, back to front, pushing it all up on its ends and mussing it.  
  
Perfect.  
  
One little tug and he can bury his hand, can pull and pull and Erik grunts and takes it, pushes into him again, swiveling his hips, leaning down to press open-mouthed kisses to his chest. A little to the right and he latches onto a nipple, taking it between his teeth and bearing down lightly.  
  
“ _Yes_ …”  
  
If only he could arch up in every place they touch: hips, chest—but he can’t press into it all at once. And a little attention to his cock would be nice. Good recovery time: twenty-nine must not be so old after all, to begin showing interest again this fast, and Erik doesn’t seem to be complaining about any physical flaws that come with age….  
  
Not so old, after all. Only old for a bearer.  
  
“Erik—please—“  
  
Getting a hand down between them, he takes a hold of his own cock and—his hand isn’t slick, is just this side of too rough, with pen calluses catching on sensitive skin, but he’ll take what he can get. Erik isn’t going to last anyway—and if Erik comes, why would he want to be left unsatisfied?  
  
It takes a minute or so before he can work himself fully up again, but, once he’s there, a few strokes are all it takes before he’s coming for the second time, pouring out into his own hand and clenching down his muscles around Erik.  
  
Yes, yes—this, please, this—all muscles tightening, bearing down, can’t breathe, can’t—  
  
Erik tips over just after him, punching a shout out of his own lungs as he does, thrusting up into Charles’ one last time before his arm gives out—how the hell did he manage with just one arm?—and he falls down onto his good side, half on top of Charles.  
  
The force of Erik’s body squeezes the air out of him, and he’s left on his back, wheezing, one arm snaking up behind Erik: wrist curling, his fingertips drop down against the skin of Erik’s shoulder under his shirt, skimming, and drawing out unconsidered shapes with no rhyme or reason. They just… happen. They could be anything, but the important thing is that, whatever they are, there’s skin-to-skin contact. He wants to touch, experience Erik against him, and imprint this—a point where it’s good, where he’s safe, wrapped up and protected in an embrace—in his mind for the days when it turns bad, and he can’t breathe for how trapped he feels.  
  
Such a fine line between protected and trapped.  
  
Breathing out shakily, he drops his gaze back and stares up at the sky. It’s partially obscured by the overhang of vines, but there’s a patchwork of blue visible, broken up by the occasional puff of cloud. As a child, he’d imagined shapes out of them—and it’s tempting to try it again now while Erik gets his breath back.  
  
Yes, Erik. Erik, whose skin, while not rough, isn’t the same smooth as his own, though it’s no less pleasant to touch. It skims along under his fingers easily, but there’s a hardiness to it that his own lacks, and there are more scars—nicks and cuts that catch on his fingertips and re-route his touch. It suits Erik very well, actually, and, for the moment, time drifts on with him flat on his back, tracing patterns into the skin of Erik’s back while he watches the sky, imagining shapes in the clouds.  
  
“All right?” Erik asks after longer than he strictly needs to catch his breath. But, from the way he’s turned his face against Charles’ neck, puffing out wisps of curling breath, that’s by design. It’s not often things are this quiet, or he’s offered this much agreeability.  
  
“Just fine,” he answers, not looking down from the sky.  
  
Without any warning, Erik’s hand appears on his arm, slipping slowly down it to his hand. It isn’t until Erik pries his hand open that he realizes he has his fist closed, and, beyond that, it takes Erik drawing the chess piece out of his grasp before it registers that he had it there. “No—“  
  
The movement stops; the chess piece remains, caught on the tips of his fingers, half in Erik’s clutch and half in his own. “I wasn’t trying to take it,” Erik murmurs, nestling it back down until the base bumps into the underside of Charles’ knuckles. “I was just curious what you had there.”  
  
As anyone with any sense of self-preservation would be. That could have been a knife. Realistically, Erik probably would have found that less surprising.  
  
And, for whatever reason, it would have been less like being caught out if he _had_ been holding a knife. To be caught with the chess piece…  
  
There’s a flush creeping up his chest, and, with Erik’s sticky weight, it’s uncomfortable. If the world had any mercy, that would be the _only_ reason it’s uncomfortable. But when has the world ever been merciful?  
  
“It’s beautiful, feeling you like this. You automatically loosen your shields during sex, you know. Not completely—you’ve been learning not to, it would seem—but more slips through. I can feel you better like this.”  
  
Beautiful, then—is that what they’re going with? It might be, but it’s also invasive. And… that’s reality sliding back into place. Must be. Nothing is quite as lulling anymore: rather like the waves lapping at his ankles have receded, and the day has gone cold. A day at the beach, ruined by the pressures of life. Relaxation, and then… _this_.  
  
“I don’t know why. Ask Frost if you want.”  
  
Erik drags his nose along the stretch of neck where he’s pressed his face, nuzzling in closer. “I try not to speak to her, if possible,” he answers, the words garbled against the skin.  
  
“Why does she hate you so much?”  
  
If there were any question that the sweetness of the moment is ending, the tension that rips back through Erik’s muscles is a sure sign. “She has no reason to like me.”  
  
He hasn’t let up on skimming his finger over Erik’s back, and—so what if they’re about to push into a difficult subject? This is better than they usually are, more amicable, and if he’s enjoying having his hands on Erik’s skin, then why stop on account of conventional standards that dictate a discussion like this merits distance? “It’s more than that. You promised me. Anything I wanted to know about your past. And I want to know _this_.”  
  
Maybe not as much as Erik doesn’t want to tell him, though: Erik groans, clipping out a curse in precise, sharp syllables that are the polar opposite of the lethargy of orgasm that had gripped him so recently. So much for the afterglow. “Didn’t say I wouldn’t tell you. Just… give me a minute….” Another curse, and he rolls off Charles and onto his own back, grunting when he flops onto the ground. Can’t be all that comfortable, when he doesn’t have the benefit of a jacket to cushion him—not that Charles has much of that either. It’s ridden up dreadfully from the drag and pull of their motions.  
  
“Did she tell you to ask me again?” Erik says, flopping his forearm over his face. The afterglow may be shot, but Erik isn’t doing much to indicate that he’s in favor of moving anytime soon.  
  
“Yes.” No point in protecting someone like Frost.  
  
“Figures.”  
  
“Why?”  
  
Erik mutters a few garbled syllables under his breath. “I don’t suppose I could convince you to let it be, simply to spite her?”  
  
“It’s down to spiting her or understanding _you_ ; I’m sure you’ll be pleased to know that I find the latter more important.”  
  
“Actually, yes, I _am_ pleased to know that.”  
  
He _would_ be—and probably for good reason. That’s not to say it’s easy to address any of that, and tightening his grip down onto the chess piece doesn’t do much beyond pull his focus back in toward what that _means_ —and that’s _Erik,_ lying next to him in the grass. “Why does she hate you?” Softer this time, but the slight twitch of Erik’s arm indicates that he heard it well enough.  
  
“Drop your shields; I’ll show you.”  
  
Because it can never be something for nothing. But, yes, all right, shields down, leaving that horribly exposed gap in his mind—and the sensation of Erik’s consciousness trickling in, a bit too close, but only because he’s looking. Too many times, especially during sex, those shields have dropped without notice, and Erik has mingled up mentally with him, and—doing it voluntarily is a realization of a bone-deep fear.  
  
All right, though: this is happening, has to happen—and the press of Erik’s mind is kind, sweeping up into his own, consciousnesses twining.  
  
 _/“I could help you.”_  
  
 _It’s been a long enough day already without this shit. Charles has—that’s not a particularly pleasant topic to think about, those things that Charles has done. Is doing. A timely missive from the border just this morning, detailing those pursuits, actually—and one go around with Charles’ exploits is plenty for the day: there are only so many times he can take hearing about_ his _bearer’s wedding—to another person._  
  
 _When he gets a hold of Moira MacTaggert, he’s going to gut her alive, and Charles had better just be thankful that he isn’t going to be made to watch. He’d deserve it, thinking he can suppress a bond, and walk away like—_  
  
 _Now is… decidedly not the time. Emma Frost is enough trouble all on her own without thoughts concerning Charles worsening the situation._  
  
 _“You think you can help me,” he parrots back, flat and unconvinced. “You work for me, Frost, but I can’t imagine what reason you’d have to believe that I actually_ trust _you.”_  
  
 _Not that Frost would need a reason. She’s clever enough to make one up all on her own. “No.” She crosses her arms, which, given her spectacularly low-cut shirt, plumps her breasts up. Nice view. Nice rack. Thankfully, chests aren’t everything there is to like in a person. “I don’t think you’re foolish enough to do that,” she concedes, curling her smile. “But we have similar goals. We might as well work together.”_  
  
 _Only if she thinks his goals essentially boil down to sex. Does she think she’s subtle, peeling down the zipper of her already low-cut jacket? Yes, thank you, that’s an appealing body, not bad to look at—and he’d actually like to fuck her, no harm in acknowledging that. She isn’t_ Charles _, but it’s been_ months _, and there’s a half-completed bond sizzling in his mind, driving him mad. And it isn’t like_ Charles _is doing much in the way of celibacy._  
  
 _“And exactly what do you think my goals are?” he asks, and—fine, may as well enjoy the view. He kicks back in his chair, leaning into it sideways, arm propped over the back and legs sprawled out in front of him._  
  
 _“You want to consolidate control of the empire that Shaw was building.”_  
  
 _“That’s an abysmally simplistic view of my motives.”_  
  
 _“And you want Xavier back.”_  
  
 _And here he’d thought he hadn’t been completely obvious about why he’s pushing for Westchester at such an accelerated pace._  
  
 _“True. And so I think you’ll see that our motives aren’t especially similar at all.” Unless she wants Charles too, and, if that’s the case, he can always use that zipper on her jacket—the garment now cast aside on a nearby chair—to strangle her._  
  
 _Clearly it was a good decision to have this conversation in his office. What a mess this would have been to talk out in a more public location. Though, she’d probably take her clothes off there too. Funny, but while most people call her a whore and decry her use of her body, that’s never been the crux of it—or, if it is, he’s misjudged her. But, from where he’s standing, Frost’s mind is sharp, enough to know that not only does a perfect figure gain her what she wants because men—and some women—can’t stop staring long enough to_ think _, but it also twists perceptions and results in underestimation. People see a body and assume there’s no mind behind it._  
  
 _What a mistake_ that _is. Frost could outthink most of them before breakfast._  
  
 _Frost huffs. “Don’t be so sure, Sugar.” Stripped down like this, she’s left in nothing more than a clinging sleeveless shirt that scoops so low it’s barely there. Plus, those fitted trousers are probably illegal in most of decent society. “Shaw was a madman, but he was right about one thing: consolidating power is the most effective way to secure a future where mutants are in control. And I may not care personally about Xavier, but I want him off his throne. With men like that in control, we’ll always be catering to humans. And I’m not about to spend the rest of my life subject to someone else’s whims like I’ve been these past few years. If Xavier gets his way, I’ll have exchanged Shaw for the humans.”_  
  
 _That’s quite a common theme these days: most everyone wants Charles to lose his crown, and all for different reasons. Everyone but Westchester, that is—though probably some of the mutants residing there would like to see him removed. Overall, though, Westchester loves its king: it’s only the rest of the world that looks at Charles as an oddity—and a dangerous one._  
  
 _That’s Charles’ main mistake, really: no one is going to give him much aid against Erik, beyond Boston and the Upper North, who will ally with him on account of a shared desire not to be overrun._  
  
 _And humans: humans love Charles, and that means humans from_ all _regions. Thankfully, that’s irrelevant. In all other places beyond Westchester, humans have no political say._  
  
 _“And maybe…” Frost presses on, sidling a few inches closer to his chair. Goodness, is the swaying of her hips actually necessary? He’s prepared to fuck her already, just to take the edge off of the ache Charles has left: she needn’t work so hard. “Maybe I’m a little curious about Xavier.”_  
  
 _Right. And maybe that marks her down for a contingency plan involving execution. People who are too curious about Charles tend to find themselves… incapacitated. “I’d suggest you not be,” he replies dryly, stretching out a hand to land on her hip when she saunters close enough._  
  
 _“I know what the future is,” she continues, unconcerned—maybe she’s not as smart as he gave her credit for being—and pressing into his touch, “And, Honey? I know what it’s like not to have a say in that future. I had plenty of that with Shaw. This time, I’ll be on top, thank you.”_  
  
 _How charming: it wouldn’t be such a stretch to think that she means that sexually as well. Whatever. Her time is her own when she’s not working for him: however she gets her kicks, it’s her business. Let her torment some other gullible non-bearer in her spare time if she so wishes._  
  
 _“I’m not giving you a promotion just because we’re about to fuck,” he answers, setting to work on the buttons of her trousers. The metal jumps to his commands, zipper unraveling downward._  
  
 _“Hmm, too bad.” But she doesn’t appear overly put-off, and she climbs up into his lap eagerly enough to suit. The weight is all wrong—too light, too flared in the hips, too heavy in the chest. She ought to be broader in the shoulders and narrower at the hips, though with a decent heft…_  
  
 _Liking both sexes doesn’t appear to mean much when, mostly, at this point, he just likes_ Charles.  
  
 _Speaking of telepaths: “Most people would be worried I’d pluck the necessary information out of their heads. Give myself a promotion the old-fashioned way: by usurping it.”_  
  
 _Most people don’t know squat—about anything. And, most particularly, about_ this _. “I thought I made it clear when I took you on: that won’t be an option.”_  
  
 _“You did,” she agrees, grinding down over his lap as he pops his own buttons. “But you never said why.”_  
  
 _“No. I didn’t.” And fishing for information won’t change that. As inconvenient as it is, Charles has his word that the world won’t find out from Erik’s lips that he’s a bearer. Charles already has an alarmingly large number of things to be angry about, and adding another is both unnecessary and cruel—and yet another grievance is the last thing either of them will need once Charles is back where he belongs._  
  
 _In the meantime, with Charles gone…_  
  
 _Feels good, having her rock down against him, offering some pressure, enough to make his cock sit up and take notice, when he’s grown so used to his own hand in the past few months. The body might be all wrong, but it’s still an attractive physical form, and he’s in his thirties, not his eighties. If Charles is going to swan off to Westchester and leave the beginnings of a bond behind him, then what possible reason would there be not to indulge? That bond is alive and buzzing in his head, demanding completion. Demanding **sex**. Sex with Frost won’t be worth anything, but it might dull that buzz, at least for a little while._  
  
 _He rocks up into Frost, setting his hands on her hips and squeezing._  
  
 _“But,” Frost continues, smiling coyly and wiggling her hips against his palms, “then I got to thinking about what it would mean to bond with a telepath. Drawing all that power through the bond if you needed it—someone bonded with a telepath, even partially bonded, could skim off the protection needed to keep other telepaths out.”_  
  
 _Right. And now, physically attractive or not, that contact isn’t so pleasurable. If this is her seduction technique, it’s terrible: it basically equates to dumping a cold bucket of water over someone’s head. “I’m afraid you’re incorrect.”_  
  
 _She arches one delicate eyebrow and props her hands on his shoulders, kneading lightly, in a parody of a massage. “Am I? Or am I maybe too close to what you’re trying to hide. See, Sugar, I think Xavier isn’t quite what he seems—and, better yet, I think he might actually be_ yours _.”_  
  
 _One good shove has her tumbling off his lap, barely catching herself on her knees: a tiny twist of gravity and she’d have been nursing bruises. “Well played, Frost.” Though, not especially—not beyond the obvious. Worked through a little further and she might have pulled it off better: timing is everything. “I mean, you butchered the delivery, and you should have waited until we were actually fucking, but I’m impressed that you puzzled it out.”_  
  
 _“Impressed” is one word for it. “Homicidal” is another. Mostly the second._  
  
 _Getting to his feet, he watches impassively as she braces her hands under herself and pushes back up until she’s once again standing. Give credit where credit is due: she’s remarkably graceful about it. “I think we’d better just be straight with each other,” he continues. She might actually agree, though that glare she’s wearing—if they find him, throat slit with diamond, it wouldn’t be a shock. “You don’t care at all for the form of government I run. What you care about is your own autonomy. I’m not even sure you particularly care about humans. You just want a place high up in my government, because you’re smart enough to realize I’m calling the shots from now on, and you want to be in the position to ride my coattails.”_  
  
 _Oh, that scowl is_ impressive ** _—_** _and completely ineffective. Charles can do her one better: with eyes like his, the emotions explode, blowing up the enemy defenses with frankly alarming success. Goes quite a ways toward explaining why Charles so often gets what he wants._  
  
 _He pops his knuckles, grimacing. Sure, it’s bad for his hands—but what’s a little arthritis in the scheme of things? It’s not like he’ll live long enough to worry about it, considering the way he’s headed. “Fine. I could care less whether you actually like me personally—I only care whether I can trust you not to change sides.”_  
  
 _She sniffs derisively. “I had enough of pledging loyalty with Shaw, Lehnsherr.”_  
  
 _“I don’t give a damn.” Sure, she’s been wronged, but the sheer number of people who have been—it’s practically infinite. He can’t care for_ everyone _—and Frost is clever enough to look after herself. Clever enough, too, that she could pose a problem. People like Frost—it’s better to head them off before they get started._  
  
 _The question then being: what is it that Emma Frost doesn’t want him to know? What would control her?_  
  
 _“You walked in here thinking you could play me with your good looks,” he continues, and, since there’s no chance of those good looks culminating in anything useful at this point, he sets about buttoning back up. “Don’t expect me to pity you because you failed.”_  
  
 _“I don’t want your pity,” she snaps, but she gets the hint and begins righting her own clothes as well._  
  
 _“Maybe not. But I think you’d play off it were I willing to offer it to you. I have to hand it to you, Frost: you’re admirably mercenary.”_  
  
 _Mercenary, all right: but a mercenary is only useful when controlled._  
  
 _“You do that for Shaw too? Take your clothes off and strike a deal?” Nothing like a good dose of alcohol to help the situation: clothes sorted out, he gets up from his chair and heads to where there’s a good bottle of whisky stashed in the drawer of his desk, alongside a glass. Some days—mostly those days when news arrives from Westchester—it’s the kind of thing that’s necessary. “Really, Frost, don’t you have any other methods of persuasion?”_  
  
 _Shrugging, she follows his movements as he pours out a finger and raises the glass to his mouth. Courtesy would suggest he offer her a drink too—but they’re not here for him to be courteous. This is not the standard to which one ought to treat a lady or a bearer, but Emma Frost is too dangerous to be indulged on account of societal convention._  
  
 _“There are a number of Shaw’s… we’ll call them_ servants _.” Meaning, of course, slaves, because it wasn’t as though Shaw paid them, and there was no chance of them leaving. “We have a number of them here. If I do some digging, I’m confident I can find out more than you’d like about exactly what arrangement you had with Shaw.”_  
  
 _“And why would you care?” she asks, crossing her arms over her chest. But—there’s a glimmer of fear in her posture, and a definite unease in her voice. Most people wouldn’t see it, but he knows fear. He’s been afraid. And he knows how_ Shaw _cultivates fear, how it looks on someone he’s worked over. She has all the tells._  
  
 _It’s impossible not to at least chuckle at her answer. “You walk into my office hoping to manipulate me? Rest assured, I **care**.” So much, in fact, that, if she weren’t useful, it would be better to eliminate her altogether. “I’ll give you credit: you played your hand well. Though, you made one major mistake: you think that because I didn’t grow up at Court, I don’t know how to the play the game. I **do.** And I know that if you’re this desperate to hide your deal with Shaw, it’s either because you’re ashamed, or because it’s something I could use against you. Or both.” Taking another sip, he stares her down over the rim of the glass. A glare like she’s giving him has probably made a good many men shake in their boots. Too bad for her, she’s picked the wrong man to try it on this time: she has nothing on Charles when he’s angry—and her opinion matters far less than Charles’ does. “Either way, now that I’m interested, I’ll find out. Tell me yourself, and I won’t use it to destroy you. But, if you prove to me that you can’t be trusted, I’ll take you apart.” _  
  
_Simple as that. If her use outweighs the danger she presents, then she’s worth tolerating, but if the threat is greater than the payoff… well, he holds no emotional attachment toward her. If she were innocent, disposing of her would be… far more problematic, in the sense of his conscience—and, despite what some would say, yes, he has one, and it doesn’t rest easy when he does harm to those who haven’t earned it. But Frost—she’s more than earned anything she gets._  
  
 _She walked in here expecting to play him, and now that the tables are turned, she’s furious, nearly gutting him with her gaze—obviously imagining doing it—but there’s also a trace of, dare he say it? Admiration. It’s probably not many people who can go up against Emma Frost and get the better of her. Ninety-five percent of those fools underestimate her because she hands her sex out like party favors—and that right there says enough about the wits of her competition to make the issue moot. Probably, most the people she targets don’t rate her highly enough to even take a second look at what she might be hiding._  
  
 _“If I’m not being clear, then let me say this: I’ll have you killed. I’d rather you worked_ for _me—but I worry much more that you’ll work_ against _me. So: I need collateral to ensure that won’t happen._ Convince me _—and, be aware, I_ will _check the veracity of your story **.** ”_  
  
 _Oddly, for a threat that could truly destroy her life, she shrugs again and turns her nose up at him, shaking that perfectly coifed hair with the movement. “Should I take that to mean that you’ve detained my personal waiting staff?”_  
  
 _The veritable army of them that she’d had at her beck and call? Not as such… although it wouldn’t be difficult to do so. “I let them go after Genosha fell. But everyone who worked for Shaw has had to register their new location: I could easily get in contact with them—and_ will _.”_  
  
 _One does have to hand it to her: she tests out her options rather than immediately giving way under intimidation. It’s almost nice to have someone who doesn’t instantly start spewing answers without understanding what the threat actually is._  
  
 _“And I should just take your word for that?”_  
  
 _He shrugs, setting the tumbler down on his desk. “As I see it, you have three choices: if you don’t give me the collateral I want, I’ll have you arrested, and you’ll walk out of this office in handcuffs, and I’ll eventually have you executed; if you give me information, but it turns out not to be true, I’ll also have you executed; or, if you tell me the truth, I won’t use the information against you, and I’ll give you a place in the government.”_  
  
 _She still doesn’t look convinced—and, on her, that comes out as an icy personality, and that perpetual scowl. It’s not attractive, that scowl. “And you’d swear by that third one?”_  
  
 _“Unless whatever it is would be a danger? Then, yes, I’ll keep my word.”_  
  
 _“Fine.” Obviously it’s not. As self-possessed as she might be, she can’t quite keep her face from curling up as though there’s a nasty smell beneath her nose. And, when she tosses herself down into his vacated chair, there’s more bitterness than usual._  
  
 _“Go on.”_  
  
 _“Shaw’s bearer? Wasn’t a bearer.”_  
  
 _And… everything grinds to a halt. That is—there’s_ no way _. Charles—someone like Charles, he had every motivation to hide, but someone who isn’t actually a bearer, wishing to act as one? Why? No one would do that: the whole satisfaction of being a bearer comes through biology, through being wired to bond with a guardian, and, without that, the lifestyle would be smothering. Horrid, surely._  
  
 _“I’m not lying,” she snaps—and whatever look he’s displaying, it must be disconcerting if she feels the need to mention that. “The woman who held back the storms? It benefitted Shaw to pass her off as a bearer, to marry her—and his absorption of energy meant he never had to worry about aging or dying. He didn’t_ need _an heir—and he didn’t want one. That would only have been competition.”_  
  
 _A guardian sleeping with a guardian. He probably ought to be appalled, but… how the hell can he possibly judge that, when he was prepared to do the same, back before he knew Charles was a bearer? Of course, there are shades of difference to that—but is that really an excuse? Sure, Charles was acting like a bearer, accepting Erik’s care, showing no ill-will when he lost most physical interactions—sparring matches, good-natured roughhousing—and generally gravitating toward Erik like a bearer pulled by the events leading up to the sparking of a bond—but the fact remains, he wanted Charles, bearer or not. Biology surely attracted them, but he was prepared to do… things that aren’t allowed, or acceptable, if Charles hadn’t turned out to be what he is._  
  
 _He was prepared to do things that Shaw apparently did himself—things that are biologically unnatural—while outlawing them for others._  
  
 _“That’s undeniably interesting, but it doesn’t tell me why Shaw kept_ you _.”_  
  
 _A flicker of unease sneaks up past her defenses, and, for a handful of seconds, she looks almost_ real _, like an authentic person, with honest emotions. She’s not all diamond hard feelings, it would seem. But watching her face crumple, even if an impenetrable mask slams up seconds later, is painful: just a little girl in pain—and, whatever his other faults, he’s not about to hurt children._  
  
 _Thans the gods Emma Frost won’t let herself be that vulnerable._  
  
 _“I said Shaw didn’t need an_ heir _—not that he didn’t want to pass on what he considered to be his…” She pauses, curling bitterness around her words, “infinitely superior genes.”_  
  
 _“He took on a sterile woman in addition to his wife—who was apparently also sterile—in order to have children? You’re speaking nonsense.”_  
  
 _“No.” She huffs, rolling her eyes. “I’m not._ You _just aren’t understanding.”_  
  
 _Nor would anyone else, when she’s being this unintelligible. “Then I suppose you’d better be clearer, hadn’t you?”_  
  
 _And that, it’s fairly obvious, is exactly what she doesn’t want to do: those delicate—though surprisingly strong, considering how she’s crunching the leather under her grasp—fingers drive down into the arms of the chair. “I’m not sterile, Lehnsherr. And before you ask: I lied about it because, in this world, if you’re a bearer, then you’re nothing. Someone’s_ property ** _,_** _nothing more. Maybe you ought to consider that before you go storming Westchester’s gates and forcing your little darling into admitting what he is.”_  
  
 _A bearer._  
  
 _Of all the things he wasn’t expecting—this—is she lying? She could be lying. No, though, not about this._ No one _would lie about this: Charles’ situation—the situation any bearer finds himself or herself in—no one would want it with_ Shaw _, as sadistic as he was._  
  
 _Charles. Gods. To think that Charles—that he found himself in the kind of situation Frost was in with Shaw—_ no _. Charles will rule_ at his side _, and it’ll be hard at first, and Charles will chafe against the added restriction, but once he sees that he has ample say in how things are run, and once he feels what it’s like to properly accept what he is and find himself under the care of someone who loves him, who wants to care for him, who’s happy to watch him exercise power—Charles will settle._  
  
 _It’s biological. Bearers were_ meant _to submit to their guardians, and once Charles is over the initial shock of the transition, he’ll find his place._  
  
 _He will treat Charles_ well ** _._** _Like the precious gift that he is._  
  
 _Not like Shaw has done to Emma Frost._  
  
 _Because that? It’s beyond disgusting._  
  
 _“Well.” Swallowing down a deep breath—because there’s nothing to say that makes perfect sense, and breathing past the horror in his throat is difficult. Shaw was a disgusting human being. “I’ll admit, that wasn’t what I was expecting.”_  
  
 _It’s not what she was expecting either, clearly: her skin has paled, draining the rosy glow out of her cheeks. It’s unsettling, that wan dulling of her skin. “Still offering me a place in your government?” As challenging as her words are, there’s no mistaking the slightly tremor in her hands._  
  
 _“I don’t see why not.”_  
  
 _She visibly starts._  
  
 _Of all the stupid things—absurd, to think that ought to matter. Bearer or not, she’s an asset to anyone who can trust her. “You haven’t magically become less competent in the last minute, Frost. And it’s not as though you’ll be ruling: you’ll be working for_ me _.” Yes, working_ for _: not like Charles inheriting as king—which, even as competent as he is—gods, what a nightmare. Bearers shouldn’t be ruling kingdoms: it’s in their nature to be_ cared _for, not to rule. Just plain stupid, though, to think that means they can’t do anything else. Biology has dictated that they need someone else to hold the leash, so to speak, but, as long as they answer to their guardian—it doesn’t mean that they can’t—damn it, they don’t have to sit around doing nothing all day.  Charles, Frost—what a waste that would be, to tuck them away and let their minds rot. And, besides, Frost will be working under a guardian in lieu of a bond. It’s probably healthier for her to work for him than it is for her, an unbound bearer, to drift aimlessly._  
  
 _Though her lips thin and there’s—hmm, quite a generous amount of dislike in her eyes—she does nod. That’s something, anyway. Agreement. And she doesn’t have to like him to do as he says. With what he has hanging over her now, doing as he says is not so much an option as it is a necessity._  
  
 _Not that taking orders means she’s suddenly had a personality overhaul—and gods forbid she’d make this easy: “Should I be worried that you’ll spread this?” she asks icily. He does have to hand it to her: she meets him head on, eyes locked to his, and with the same sharp disdain that’s always characterized their interactions._  
  
 _Even so, the shock must have rattled her after all: she hasn’t thought that question through. “Why would I? I tell everyone, I lose my leverage. Besides, not everyone is quite as… open-minded as I’m inclined to be: the position I have in mind for you involves interaction with a large number of guardians, and I can’t imagine they’d be keen to answer to a bearer.”_  
  
 _“Charming.” In the same way as stepping in dog poop would be charming, apparently._  
  
 _Rolling his eyes is too tempting: and, likewise, it would be tremendously satisfying to turn away and express precisely how irrelevant her complaining is, but it’s never a good idea to turn his back to someone whose life is hanging on his word._  
  
 _If she killed him now, she could walk away free._  
  
 _Though… assassination attempts always get the blood pumping, one way or another. Might be a nice way to break up the day—and damn if it wouldn’t be better than sitting here trying not to think about Charles’ impending nuptials._  
  
 _An actual attempt isn’t likely, unfortunately. For now, she’s making due with trying to kill him via her gaze alone._  
  
 _“What has you displeased_ now _?” he asks, tapping a finger down on the surface of the desk. His mother would have scolded him for impatient fidgeting. But, then, she’d have scolded him for a lot of things these days._  
  
 _If Frost full-out sneered at him, it would have made more sense, but the tiny little curl of her upper lip is much subtler, the low-calorie version of a sneer. “You think you’ve done something good, don’t you, Sugar?”_  
  
 _Not offering her up for the nearest guardian to claim as many people would have done? Sparing her that is certainly not the worst thing he’s done all week. And, considering the falling birth rate, yes, she ought to be thankful he didn’t follow the letter of the law._  
  
 _“I assume you’re about to tell me otherwise.” Said dryly, with the full force of exactly how little patience he has for this._  
  
 _“You wouldn’t listen. You were never inside that palace. You don’t know the kinds of wrong a bond can become. And,_ yes _, there was a bond.”_  
  
 _“_ Shaw _managed a bond?” He can feel his eyebrows arch, but he doesn’t bother to stop them. Honestly?_ Shaw _, bonded? The man shouldn’t be allowed a goldfish, let along a bearer._  
  
 _“You think you’re going to be different from him?” she—ah, that’s a snarl. Looks like they’re done playing nice—and_ now _that lip curls, fully disdainful. “I wouldn’t exactly count on a happy mating in your future.”_  
  
 _“Is that a threat?”_  
  
 _This time, she’s the one who rolls her eyes. “Gods, you really don’t get it, do you? I don’t_ need _to threaten you. You don’t need my help: you’ll ruin things all on your own.”_  
  
 _“Is that so?” He says it dully, bored with it, honestly. Of all the people who accuse him of atrocities, she thinks she’ll be the one to finally convince him?_  
  
 _Still… it’s difficult to shake that niggling worry, that tiny insidious thought: she’s a bearer who was forced into a marriage, just like Charles will be. If there’s any advice she can give that will make Charles’ transition easier, then… for Charles, it’s worth hearing her out._  
  
 _“You think you’re doing Xavier a favor—giving him what he needs.” Leaning back, she tips her head up to the side, cocking it slightly and staring over at him with a frankly disconcerting smirk. “And that’s the worst of it: he’s going to want you. If I’m right, and you’re bonded—“_  
  
 _“That isn’t how it works.” He kicks out his desk chair with a quick nudge to the leg and settles himself back in it. “Bearers aren’t compelled to obey their guardians. There’s a biological pull, and the guardian gains access to his bearer’s gifts, but the bearer’s will is his own.”_  
  
 _“Someone’s been doing his homework.” Something that seems to give her a sadistic sort of pleasure, strangely enough. “But you’re missing the point: that’s almost worse. Believe me. I_ know _. Being drawn to a person, wanting their contact and company when your mind knows how very wrong it is—that’ll tie even the strongest person up in knots. And maybe Xavier_ is _in love with you. I don’t know. I’ve only heard rumors. But, if he is, think about it: not only will he feel betrayed by what his own body pushes him to do, but he’ll end up hating himself too, for loving someone who’s put him in this position.”_  
  
 _There’s no reason for the iciness in his legs. But, if he were to try to stand right this second, it doesn’t feel as though his legs could handle it—and there’s no reason for that. He and Charles—they’ve fought a_ war _together. Charles had—_ Charles _sparked their bond. “You don’t know anything about either of us,” he replies coolly. “I’m not_ Shaw _. And Charles certainly isn’t_ you _.”_  
  
 _“No. Your little darling is more dangerous than I am: I only want to take care of my own, Lehnsherr; your Charles wants to change the world.”_  
  
 _“I’ll happily let him do that.” Snapped out, too quickly—and she catches that, grinning._  
  
 _“Will you? That’s adorable.” Not when she drawls the word out like that, it isn’t. And, just for the sake of wiping that disgusting smugness off her face, find a question, any question that will off-balance her—and why not a pertinent one, while he’s at it?_  
  
 _“Do you have any children with Shaw?”_  
  
 _If there had been evidence available earlier to suggest that this would silence her so effectively, he might have tried this minutes ago. How satisfying: even on Frost, gaping like a goldfish isn’t overly attractive._  
  
 _“It’s a valid question,” he continues, propping his elbows on the desk and leaning forward. “If Shaw has heirs running around, I need to know about it.”_  
  
 _“One.”_  
  
 _Gods, the idea of Frost with a child—the poor thing must be irrevocably twisted. “And where is he?”_  
  
 _“If you recall, Lehnsherr, Shaw had the ability to keep himself young—an ability he shared with some of his associates: just because I look thirty doesn’t mean I_ am _. My daughter is grown by now. Brilliant girl that she is, she ran away before Shaw could press her into working for him. She’s a telepath as well, and I think we can both guess what that would have meant for her. Shaw may not have wanted an heir, but he was thrilled with the possibility of a telepath who bore his own blood.”_  
  
 _“How old_ are _you?”_  
  
 _The smile she gives him is both wide and completely false. “You should never ask a lady her age.”_  
  
 _Let her play coy, then. It doesn’t matter. There are more important things to press on about. “Fine. Where’s your daughter?”_  
  
 _“Why would I know?” As much as that sounds like a lie, the openness of her face speaks to genuine surprise. “She was barely a teenager when I helped her flee the palace: do you honestly think she dropped by every weekend for a chat with her mother? She’s a girl, a bearer—Shaw never announced her existence. She was powerful, and he wanted to use her to further his goals: he intended her as an intelligence agent, as near as I can tell, and, if her face was known, well—she wouldn’t have been a very effective agent, then, would she? And… as crazy as it sounds, I think he loved her, in his own way. If he’d told the world about her existence, he’d have caught her up in the system he’d made: bearers don’t escape their duties simply because they’re royalty.”_  
  
 _Unless their last name is “Xavier,” apparently._  
  
 _“And her name?”_  
  
 _“Honestly, Lehnsherr, if you heard about someone running around with the last name ‘Shaw’ don’t you think you’d have noticed?”_  
  
 _Fair point. That’s not a name anyone uses these days. Frost is right: wherever her daughter is, she’ll be going by another name now._  
  
 _“You’d probably like her,” Frost adds, sighing and tapping a finger against her knee. Some of her usual composure has seeped back in, and she’s returned to presenting a near-perfect figure, seated prim and proper in the chair. “She wanted to see her father off the throne as much as you did.”_  
  
 _“I doubt that.” No one wanted to see Shaw dead as much as he had. “You realize that if you can tell me nothing about her, I’ll treat her just the same as anyone else if she causes me trouble.”_  
  
 _“I’ve already told you she’s a telepath—and we aren’t exactly a dime a dozen, Sweetie. You start killing off telepaths, and you’ll be wasting a valuable resource.”_  
  
 _He bites down on the inside of his cheek, reorienting himself with the sharp pang of pain. “I’ll have one working with me.”_  
  
 _“Somehow I don’t think Xavier is going to be particularly quick to do the sorts of things you’d need.”_  
  
 _Not all of them, no. And—asking Charles to strip someone’s mind for information—that’s not something that should ever be required of him. “Are you implying_ you _would be?”_  
  
 _Her tapping speeds up, and she laughs a little, though it’s so overshadowed by bitterness that she might as well not have bothered. “Yes.”_  
  
 _“Interrogations? Pulling things out of people’s minds?”_  
  
 _“You keep my secret, Sugar, and I’ll take apart just about anyone you want.”_  
  
 _“Remarkably mercenary of you.”_  
  
 _“I’m not prepared to sacrifice myself for people who wouldn’t do the same for me. I’m sure you know the feeling.”_  
  
 _As a matter of fact, yes. Frost might be a selfish bitch, but she’s right all the same—and it’s hard to fault her for looking to take care of herself, now that she’s finally free of Shaw. “A deal, then: you do what I ask, and I won’t tell the world just what you are.”_  
  
 _They don’t seal it with a handshake. They barely even acknowledge what this is—if it’s anything that has a label. It’s… not the sort of thing polite society wants to see or hear of, when two flawed people size each other up and beat each other down until one of them comes out on top. So long as he’s the one who wins in the end, though—there are far worse things he could be doing in order to reach his goals._  
  
 _Frost will be an asset. She’ll hate him for the knowledge that he has, but, in lieu of Charles’ skills, she’ll work in a pinch. Not the best, but better than nothing./_  
  
“You slept with her later, didn’t you.” Not a question.  
  
From beside him—there’s no mistaking that, even with the fog of memory taking its time to draw back—Erik barks out a harsh laugh and, with another suppressed bit of laughter, flops his arm across the space between them and drags his knuckles down each rib that he can reach. “ _That’s_ your first thought after seeing that memory? _Liebling_ , are you _jealous_?”  
  
Gods, _is_ he? The idea of Erik with someone else isn’t a pleasant one. Even knowing how awfully hypocritical that is doesn’t quite banish the sensation, and—Erik is smiling far too widely at the prospect, with that playful grin that shows enough teeth to frighten someone who doesn’t know that it’s actually indicative of honest amusement.  
  
“I suppose I’m worried about picking up a disease,” he answers primly, shoving Erik’s hand away from his ribs.  
  
Another bout of laughter, this one deeper and longer, and Erik rolls across the patch of grass between their bodies to pull them chest-to-chest. One quick tug drags Charles half up on top of him where he can perch, elbows on either side of Erik’s chest, holding his own body a few inches above Erik’s. Looking down like this, a lock of hair falls into his eyes; he tosses his head, trying to shake it away, but, after a few tries, Erik huffs and reaches up to tuck it behind his ear for him. “I’d never endanger you like that. And, more importantly, I never slept with her.”  
  
“And… she’s a bearer.”  
  
“Yes. And, before you ask, I was careful during any other affairs I had while you were gone: you won’t have to worry about raising any bastard children.”  
  
“I never worried—“  
  
“No, I guess you wouldn’t. You’re not the kind of person who would blame the children.”  
  
“Why did you—?”  
  
“Because _my_ bearer was getting married, to someone who wasn’t me. I was angry, Charles. Can you blame me?” Erik has sobered now, and the hint of laughter from before has dried up and left a puzzled sort of worry in his face. A more generous assessment might include contrition, couched inside the pinch at the corners of his eyes. “Angry and hurt, and—this is why I didn’t tell you this before.” Sighing, he thumps his head back against the ground and stares up toward the vine work lattice and the sky. “I didn’t think it out. I didn’t do it out of a desire to hurt you—I didn’t think much at all, at the time. If you were going to sleep with other people, I figured I wasn’t going to be so pathetic as to abstain as well.”  
  
“Person.”  
  
“Hmm?” Catching the lock of Charles’ hair when it flops back down yet again, Erik pinches it between his fingertips, rubbing it over the pad of his fingers.  
  
“I only ever slept with _one_ person.”  
  
“And thank the gods for that: I’d hate to have to track down multiple former lovers.”  
  
Too bad that isn’t humorous—and possibly not meant to be. Erik’s face does look very serious, after all, lines in his forehead and all.  
  
“Only one of us is guilty of sleeping around.” The words keep on coming, but everything about them is ridiculous. He has no reason to act like a slighted lover, when Erik wanted him all along and only ever slept with others because—it’s not so easy to explain, actually. The bond must have been driving him mad, demanding a completion that he couldn’t achieve with his bearer absent. It’s no wonder he tried to scratch that itch elsewhere.  
  
But with _Frost?_ She’s—fine, she’s really quite attractive, but she’s horrid. Nasty and mean.  
  
“You _are_ jealous,” Erik murmurs, and—he looks enchanted, wide-eyed and with a generous smile. The emotion leaks down into his touch, and his grip softens, dropping down to Charles’ face to stroke the skin of his forehead. After a few sweeps of his hand, he goes further, smoothing the hair back off Charles’ forehead. “I never wanted anyone else like I want _you_. You know that.”  
  
“Frost is a bearer. I—you let her hide, when you wouldn’t let _me_ hide.” Pathetic, how plaintive his voice sounds, but it’s not the sort of thing that can be hidden.  
  
“She isn’t ruling anything, Charles. She works for _me_. And she isn’t bonded—she has no responsibility to a guardian. It’s a different situation. If you and I hadn’t bonded, I would have disagreed with what you were doing—with the population barely stable, you _do_ have a duty as a bearer—but I wouldn’t have forced you to reveal what you are. But… with a bond—you can’t fight biology, Charles, and you were never meant to rule anyway. I’m willing to let her destroy herself by denying her gender, but I’m not willing to let _you_ do that kind of damage to yourself.”  
  
“Fuck you.” But it comes out tired, more of a sigh than a word, and he can’t prompt himself to do much more than curl away from Erik, over onto his side, where—how very predictable—Erik chases after him, looping an arm around his waist and pulling him close, chest to back.  
  
“I love you.”  
  
Gods. It means everything. It’s—he squeezes his eyes shut and sighs out into the grass. Erik loves him. And he _wants_ to be loved, by Erik, always by Erik—obviously, if he’s jealous, if he hates the thought of Erik with someone else, and was that really actually necessary to figure it out? No—only to admit it, that he loves Erik, and maybe hates him, and—none of that makes it any less unfair or gut-wrenching, and sometimes it’s hard to breath, thinking about that love, when it’s so tied up in loss.  
  
“I—“  
  
But the sound of boots crunching over the ground near the entrance to the grove steals his voice. The sharp squeak that slips out of his mouth is miles beyond embarrassing, but those are _soldiers_ and he is _naked_ —and, how nice to know, they’re every bit as horrified as he is.  
  
Or possibly they’re simply terrified of Erik.  
  
Good reasoning, that: as soon as one of the men—there are more of them, more minds lingering, just beyond the edge—catches sight of exactly what they’re commander is getting up to inside the grove, he lets out a strangled croak and spins around, chased by Erik’s instinctive growl and a healthy dose of self-preservation.  
  
“What the—“  
  
This may possibly be the one time he doesn’t protest being manhandled by Erik: at least with Erik leaning up in front of him, he won’t be flashing all of himself to a band of soldiers. Though, Erik isn’t exactly proving himself restrained by the same compunctions: he looks about ready to stride out in all his glory, probably rip their throats out for daring to look at Charles—not that they did, and that’d be a dent to a man’s ego, that hesitancy, if not for the fact that their refusal is very clearly attributable to Erik’s presence.  
  
“For godsake, Erik, stop. Put your clothes on. Don’t—“  
  
Ah, yes, why would Erik dress _himself_ when he can so easily set about shoving _Charles_ back into his clothes? Who would have thought that Erik would ever be this eager to get him _dressed?_  
  
Eventually Erik does dress himself as well, tugging on his garments at the same time that he marches for the entrance to the sectioned-off area, already bellowing for his soldiers to provide an explanation. Trying to follow on his heels doesn’t do much good, but only results in Erik’s death grip on his wrist, tugging him along and at the same time holding him out of the direct line of the soldiers’ sight. That sort of thing works, when there just happens to be a hedge handy behind which one’s mate can be hidden.  
  
And he’s not even naked anymore. Honestly, Erik….  
  
“We don’t—my Lord— _sorry_ —“  
  
“And what,” Erik snarls, fingers clenching, “could possibly have been so important as to motivate you to interrupt me when I explicitly ordered that I should not be disturbed?”  
  
Because gods know walks in the rose gardens are _important._ Getting laid definitely is, considering how seldom Erik has had the privilege lately. That doesn’t mean the _soldiers_ need to know that—though Erik looks seconds away from telling them about it.  
  
It can’t be good that there’s a quick burst of silence. Soldiers with good news don’t hold back.  
  
Sure enough, when it comes, the tone of the unlucky soldier elected to bear the news is shaking. If not for the hedge in the way, it would probably be possible to see the fear smeared all over the man’s expression. “Sir, there’s been a break-in at Genosha.”  
  
What the—?  
  
Never, in all his life, has a memory hit him quite like this one. It’s different, when someone says the trigger word, and everything seeps back in quietly. This isn’t like that at all. This comes, unstoppable, freight–train-fast, bowling over into his mind and flattening any resistance.  
  
It might as well: the shock of knowing that the break-in is underway is enough to rattle him down to the core.  
  
Erik too, apparently: his shoulders tense, rising upward as his muscles contract, and his grip turns almost punishing, though one quick tug reminds him that he’s bearing down too hard and he loosens his fingers accordingly.  
  
 _“What?”_  
  
“Emma Frost, Sir.”  
  
Erik’s shoulders rise and fall as he takes a deep breath, straining it out through his teeth.  
  
The soldier—if his face were visible, here’s to betting it would be pasty pale—presses onward: “She had all the necessary clearances, Sir—“  
  
“I’m well aware she had clearance. What I want to know is what she’s apparently done with it.”  
  
“Managed to smuggle out some of Westchester’s most prominent citizens, Sir.”  
  
“Damn her to _hell_ ,” Erik snarls—but he doesn’t forget himself entirely. Or, else, he doesn’t forget _Charles_ : his elbow locks, blocking Charles when he tries to push forward and out past the hedge.  
  
“And…”  
  
“ _Tell me_.”  
  
Yes, though, really: the soldiers ought to be better trained than this. They should know how to deliver a message emotionlessly. This sort of hesitation is just bad form.  
  
“She took your son, Sir.”  
  
 _Erik’s_ son, as though David isn’t Charles’ boy at all. He _isn’t_ Erik’s. He never was. But what David _is_ , right this minute? Is a dead giveaway.  
  
It doesn’t take a genius—Charles’ level, anyhow, and, possibly Erik’s, if they’re being honest—to tell when Erik puts the pieces together. It’s a smattering of things, surely: the timing, a lack of reaction on Charles’ part, the circumstances. For a few precious seconds, the motion leaks out of him, and he’s left ramrod straight against the side of the archway, holding Charles back inside the garden.  
  
When he finds his motion once again, it’s with the air of an executioner.  
“Assemble anyone who matters, and have them meet me in the war room,” he says quietly. “My arrival may be delayed a few minutes: do _not_ interrupt me. And I want potential solutions on the table by the time I get there. Am I understood?”  
  
“Yes, Sir.”  
  
Yes, Sir. No questions, no hesitance, just the sound of boots tramping across the gardens. Hopefully they avoid the flowers. These gardens were never meant to be canvassed by soldiers in full uniform, and it’d be a shame to waste all the time he’s put into this place.  
  
On the other hand, having the soldiers stay is beginning to seem more and more appealing, the tighter Erik’s breathing becomes. If he keeps on that way, he might manage to suck the oxygen out of his own blood. Nice thought; unlikely possibility. Too bad.  
  
What’s _really_ too bad is the way Erik turns back toward him, slowly, pivoting on one foot with such force that it grinds the grass out under his heel and smudges it into a muddy swirl on the ground. Ah. Right. He’s watching the ground, rather than Erik’s face—and not such a bad decision, that. Erik’s feet project enough anger to be getting on with—how the hell is that even possible?—and his face would surely be nearly overwhelming.  
  
But… time to find out, and that isn’t fair, Erik’s hand notching under his chin, cradling his neck in the v between Erik’s thumb and forefinger, raising up his gaze without ever asking. Is this choking? It feels like it could be—but Erik only ever did that once, and it wasn’t meant to be the kind of hurt that it ended up being, that day when Erik tried to take David from him.  
  
Erik isn’t going to do it so deliberately.  
  
“Anything to say, Charles?”  
  
The way it comes out, soft and even, one would think it’s an everyday question, but anyone who knows Erik, really _knows_ him, would be able to hear the ice under the words, and the raw danger sliding terrifyingly close to the surface.  
  
“I don’t see why.” Meeting Erik’s eyes— _this,_ then, this was why he hadn’t wanted to do that. Erik—there was never any question that he’d betray Erik, but staring down the knowledge of those actions… this might be what it feels like to have his ribs spread, heart still beating—to have his organs poked and prodded, and to be angry about it the whole time through.  
  
“You don’t see why,” Erik echoes flatly. His fingers flex. And then, flatly: “No. Of course not.”  
  
There was never any real chance that Erik would accept that as an answer. Only, he does, or plays at it anyway, drawing back, tugging Charles along with him, hand remaining on his neck. The pads of his fingers press in lightly, though the rest of his hand doesn’t, as he begins walking backward, drawing Charles in the wake of his motion until he finally drops his hand and threads his fingers through Charles’ own instead. “Well, then, Darling.” That’s not good, that smile—the way it jumps and twitches, wry, but—frozen. Bitter. “I think we’d better go back to our rooms, don’t you? After all—“ A nasty squeeze that crushes Charles’ fingers; he shoves down the wince, “—you’ll be spending what promises to be an extend period of time there in the foreseeable future.”  
  
“You’re the one who sent me off with her,” he snaps back, though he goes along when pulled—because there’s nothing else to do, and everything is narrowing down to the size of a pin, and that’s all he’s seeing.  
  
Just Erik.  
  
 Erik turns, dragging him along out of the garden by his hand. There’s never been a worse parody of tender lovers than this, walking together, holding hands—and it’s more like a battle march. “And you simply took advantage, is that it?” He laughs, though he doesn’t let up on his concentrated march forward out of the gardens. “I shouldn’t be surprised.”  
  
But he _is._ He sounds it. Or… he sounds angry, half at himself. Or maybe that’s a projection—because Erik _should_ be angry at himself.  
  
“I told you, I gave you fair warning—“  
  
A sharp yank pulls him around a hedge, and he slips, leaning on Erik’s hold to keep his feet. A few tottering steps and he’s able to right himself.  
  
“You never told me anything,” Erik snaps back. “You’re very good at that.”  
  
“You don’t listen to the things I _do_ tell. Why the hell would you think I’d be in a hurry to tell you _more_ —?“  
  
“Stop it.”  
  
Something about the tone—he does, he stops. He ought to fight Erik, talk to spite him, but Erik couldn’t have hit him any harder if he’d actually used fists. The sound of those words creeps down into his bones better than a blow: Erik never talks to _him_ like that, as though he’s a soldier; a subject; and, right now, a glaring liability.  
  
Erik doesn’t say another word as they exit the gardens, nor does he bother when they enter the palace, turning heads and stealing stares, because of course _everybody knows_. They shouldn’t, and—they probably don’t, and it only feels like people are staring. They stare all the time anyway; this isn’t any different. He and Erik are a sight, and, most days, a spectacle, depending on what they’re doing.  
  
Ten minutes ago, they were having sex in the garden.  
  
“Move.”  
  
Had he stopped? Yes, just from thinking about it—or slowed down, anyway. Erik doesn’t have the patience to deal with the delay, and he’s gone on walking, stretching the length of their arms out to the maximum, and then giving a good jerk when that’s not enough to get what he wants.  
  
It’s better, though, to have this discussion out of sight and away from listening ears, and that’s enough of a motivation to put up with being towed about. For once, he and Erik want the same thing.  
  
Rarer, even, that they get what they want together: but they do, or near enough once Erik has marched them down the halls and back to the bedroom, tossing a sharp salute for the guards—more than there were before—at the door. The guards must know what’s happened in Genosha, but they don’t comment, and they keep their eyes ahead, silent and stoic where the mansion staff wasn’t.  
  
The door clicks shut behind them, and, only then, does Erik let go of his hand.  
  
Being released shouldn’t feel like floating, adrift, but having that link broken between them—pathetic, that he wants Erik’s hand back, but they’re peeling away from each other in every other way, and that one comfort was grounding.  
  
Doesn’t matter. Erik isn’t going to reach back out. It’s a wonder he’s bothered to regard Charles with any sort of kindness at all, when he ought to know— _does_ know, of course he does—that the news that’s reached them has effectively tossed a line down between them.  
  
The way Erik paces across the room, one might think he’s walking that line, learning its boundaries.  
  
All those years ago, Erik hadn’t paced. He’d come to Westchester with a request, and he’d presented it to the then king, to the man who is now his husband. Charles straightens his shoulders at the thought, watching Erik wear that line between them into the floor with his feet, making physical the mess that’s about to burst wide open.  
  
It was Erik’s eyes that intrigued him, that first time. Erik had looked at him like he had the potential to be a savior, or, if not a savior, a partner. The room had been dim, lit by firelight and gas in an attempt to save on electricity, but the ambiance had suited Erik, and it probably should have been clear right then that he was lost, caught up in Erik. They’d talked, but the whole damn time he’d been watching Erik, not necessarily agreeing, but so interested that there was never much question that he’d interact with Erik in some further way.  
  
Back then, he’d been very used to getting what he wanted. Further time spent with the fascinating new man who’d entered his sitting room was hardly a prospect beyond his grasp.  
  
Maybe they were biologically drawn to each other, even then. There are theories that a form of mild imprinting occurs as early as the first meeting should the couple be unusually physically compatible. If that’s to be believed, then an almost immediate mild imprinting wouldn’t be outside the realm of possibility, especially considering how easily the bond between them took when they actually made some sort of sexual contact.  
  
The bond. Yes, the bond. No matter what happens here today, he and Erik are tied together, regardless of whether they’re on opposite sides of a war.  
  
And they _are_. But this isn’t how it was supposed to unfold. When Erik found out, he was inevitably going to be angry, but then he was supposed to _leave_ , declare they’d discuss this later after he’d sorted things, and then—only then— _that_ was the point when escape should have happened.  
  
But Erik is here, and he isn’t leaving, though there’s a council meeting waiting for him.  
  
They’re going to discuss this _now_.  
  
“I don’t have the time to list for you all the reasons why what you’ve done is—“ Erik bites off his sentence, turning as he does, and—looking like that, it’s very possible that this will devolve quickly. Everything about his expression is blank, steel and cold and more untouchable than the metal he controls.  
  
Untouchable, and nothing like the chess piece currently lodged in Charles’ pocket.  
  
That was affection. That was humanity.  
  
This is—  
  
This is _opponents_ , two men facing across the battlefield. Love doesn’t touch that in the visible ways—doesn’t exist again until defeat has knocked one of them back down. This was them during that time apart, while Erik tore armies apart and ignored lines on a map, and that’s what they’ll be again.  
  
It’s war, all over _again_.  
  
That—Erik, to not care, to see him not care—  
  
Is maybe for the best.  
  
“You knew I’d do something like this,” he answers quietly, shuffling sideways until the wood of the desk pokes into his hip. Toward the edge of the table there’s a belt, shucked without care when he’d put away Erik’s uniform, after Erik had been injured.  
  
“No. I _didn’t_.” A spark of emotion, though not a nice one: Erik shakes his head, looking down and off to the side. A glance shouldn’t be able to be self-deprecating, but this one achieves it easily. “I knew you’d try, but I’d hoped that at the last minute you’d have found you couldn’t go through with it.” His gaze snaps back up, boring into Charles’ face, and Charles freezes, hand clutching the edge of the desk hard enough to hurt his joints. “Was it really so easy, Charles, to betray me?”  
  
“I could ask you the same thing.”  
  
“I’ve never betrayed you.”  
  
What a lovely world it would be if that were true. “You found out something I didn’t want the world to know, and you used it, and—“  
  
“AND NOTHING!”  
  
The sound—just the sound of it—and his fingers scrabble against the wood of the desk, and breathing hurts, everything hurts. But nothing hurts _worse_ than seeing the pure rage on Erik’s face. Erik’s skin darkens and flushes, forming blotches on his cheeks; his mouth chops out the words with furious movements around the syllables, teeth clacking with the force of his shout. There might have been some spit hurled out to the air, but it’s lost before there’s any chance to see it for sure.  
  
He says it again, quieter this time, chest heaving: “And nothing.” One more deep breath that puffs his chest out and raises his shoulders, dropping them back down again once he’s let it out. “You lived a lie for most of your life, and all I did was see you back where you should have been all along. But—“ He takes a step forward. Closer now—the belt on the desk, if he can get that before Erik gets too close… “You’re blind. You’re _so_ blind.” Erik presses in, clenching the hand of his good arm into a fist. The muscles of his arm and shoulder don’t appear to tighten, so no indication he’s going to lash out, but the tension in his body overall is too great to dismiss the possibility completely. “All you want is to be something you aren’t, and I… _won’t_ have this conversation with you any longer.”  
  
Feeling his way along the edge of the desk, he reaches back—and goes motionless when Erik’s eyes narrow. “Then I’m afraid we won’t have much to talk about.” If Erik thinks that’s enough to silence him, he’s about to be unpleasantly disappointed. Though, tipping his chin up and staring down his nose at Erik as best he can may not be the most intelligent idea. Erik is riled enough as it is.  
  
“No?” One more step forward, though he at least unclenches his fist. Little good that does, with the color so high in his cheeks and his eyes glittering like mad. The pupils are blown too wide to make out more than a tiny ring of color. “I disagree.”  
  
“How novel.”  
  
Erik ignores the sarcasm. “We should discuss the fact that, were you anyone else, I’d have already given the order for your execution.”  
  
Right. Well. Someone put the kettle on, because _that_ promises to be a long conversation.  
  
Erik is very close now, leaning in and slanting their bodies together—bloody magnet, he is, sticking near despite Charles bending backward until his spine creaks in protest, elbows back on the desk and bruising from the press of too much weight onto them. But there’s leather under his hand, and it makes having Erik so close and so furious easier to bear. A half hour ago, they were curled together in the garden. Gods. _Gods._ “Do it then.” The words barely leave his mouth, but Erik is close enough to catch them.  
  
“Like you did for Raven?”  
  
Fuck. _Yes_. If Erik believes that much in what he’s doing—then, _yes_.  
  
“Luckily for you, Charles—“  
  
“Nothing about this situation is lucky for me.”  
  
“—I love you more than you apparently loved your sister.”  
  
That isn’t fair. It hadn’t been about that. Love covers a multitude of sins, but not _all_ of them, and what Raven had done... Moira hadn’t deserved it. She’d been caught between two fighting factions, and maybe that’s his fault too, but he couldn’t let Raven walk away from that. “Don’t you _dare_ —“  
  
Erik grabs a hold of his hair before he can spit out anything further. “Don’t be stupid. You knew I’d never sign an order for your execution, and you took advantage of it.”  
  
Not as such—but only because the possibility had never actually come up. A death sentence? The situation hadn’t seemed that dire, but more about himself and Erik directly.  
  
“Let go.” He’ll go bald at this rate. Bloody painful, having Erik shake him by his hair, small and abbreviated as the motion may be. Like shaking a dog by the scruff. Embarrassing.  
  
Lashing out, he slams the palm of his hand forward toward Erik’s face, trying to get in a blow, scratching if he must—but Erik twists him at the last moment, smudging a friction burn out along his wrist. One good shove forces him down, planting his face into the desk. Keep a hold of the belt, though—and that’s all right, when Erik is pressed against his side, pinning down the arm that holds the belt out of sight, kept there by the sheer bulk of Erik’s weight. Erik is by no means overweight—quite the opposite—but there’s enough muscle on him to give him a good heft. That weight is more than enough to pin effectively.  
  
“Let go? Is that it, Charles? You think you have the right to demand? You’ll destabilize the whole fucking union of regions with _Emma Frost_ , and then you’ll still see fit to order me about. So, no. I won’t let go. I will hold you right here until you tell me exactly what you planned with her.”  
  
“You’re _insane._ ”  
  
Not really. Stubborn, intractable, and incapable of accepting other positions, but not insane.  
  
A trickle of dark laughter bubbles out of Erik’s mouth. “I probably am. But I know one thing: the population is barely holding steady, and tensions between humans and mutants have never been higher. This world needs a strong leader, or it’s going to erupt into chaos. You wanted to sit back in Westchester, up North and away from the world, but I know better, Charles, and I won’t see more of our kind slaughtered. I won’t see this world go crazy and destroy what’s left of itself, simply because you’re unable to stomach what we’ve become. Nature has given people places for a reason, and it’s about time you realized that applies to both humans and yourself.”  
  
“Go to hell.”  
  
“Already there, Darling. You think I _like_ living in a world where I fight like this with you? I want you by my side. I love you—gods, I love you so much it _hurts_ —“ His fingers tighten, and a few hairs part company with Charles’ scalp, “but until you understand that a system where all the regions were separate, living by their own laws—until you see how unworkable that was, you’ll keep trying things like this. So, I’ll fix things myself, and when I’m done, and when it works, maybe then you’ll finally understand.”  
  
He’s crazy if he thinks—if bending things with force—no— “I said, _go to hell.”_ And he thrashes, throwing an elbow back at Erik, going for his chest. One good blow—that’s all that he needs.  
  
And that’s what he gets.  
  
The blow lands right up under Erik’s clavicle, not precisely where the wound is, but close enough. It’s probably better that it doesn’t hit directly, when that kind of force would almost definitely pop Erik’s stitches. But, like this, Charles can roll, fingernails scrambling over the wood, legs kicking, and he flips over, jerking his leg in Erik’s direction.  
  
The kick drives solidly into the side of Erik’s thigh, slamming into muscle. It hurts to kick that hard, but it’s worth it, when Erik goes to his knees with a pained grunt, and, out of necessity, lets go of his fistful of hair. He has only one arm to catch himself with, the other pinned to his chest.  
  
That’s a major advantage. Come on, _think_. He can’t see Erik as both his husband and an opponent, and right now he’s the later, so _think_. What are his weaknesses? _Exploit_ his weaknesses, damn it.  
  
Come on, come on….  
  
“I don’t—“ Grabbing the belt, and if this is going to happen, it has to be now. “I never wanted—“ _This._  
  
Any of this.  
  
But why would that ever matter? It didn’t matter when he imprinted on Erik. It didn’t matter when Erik claimed him. It didn’t matter when—gods, when they tore the world apart, fighting, and it didn’t matter when Erik broke down the gates of Westchester. It didn’t matter at their wedding, and it didn’t matter when a bonding mark was tattooed onto his wrist.  
  
To think that his wants would matter now is a child’s dream. That sort of naivety? No. Thank you, but _no._ That sort of thought led to him allowing himself to get close to Erik: it led to the _bond._  
  
Erik is a conqueror, whatever else he might be—no use denying that. A husband who loves his spouse to the point of obsession, yes, but Erik—if Erik has his way, what’s to stop him, and, fifteen years from now, it will be like nothing mattered, and all the love in the world—a _bond_ —doesn’t change that. What kind of world would this be?  
  
But Erik—  
  
Looping a belt around Erik’s neck and pulling tight, when it will never feel right to do it, to choke Erik, who has loved him and fought by and with him—it’s a punch to his own chest, knocking the air out of him. And… _what’s mine is yours_ , hmm, best share the violence? Oh, gods, that isn’t funny. But… he slams Erik’s head down into the desk just the same, and the nauseating sound of flesh and bone smacking wood ricochets off the walls and clubs him around the head. That—that could be what causes the tears to well up and burn the insides of his eyes. Hurting Erik is _awful._ It’s tempting, to finally give into the grief and curl up against Erik and cry, where he will be rocked and held and loved, protected—and forced into a role that’s wrong. Everything aches, but he clenches his hands down, burying his face into Erik’s hair and molding to his back, holding on as Erik propels himself upward with the strength of his thighs alone, one good hand caught up in trying to keep the belt from pulling tight around his neck. He’s disoriented, though, stumbling, and the smell of blood is thick in the air.  
  
They stagger together. Erik, if he had two good arms, could throw his elbow back, and make it count. But he doesn’t. He can’t. So, tug tighter, tight to the point where the leather digs into his hands, slipping when Erik yanks, and he clenches down tighter and tighter and tighter. The bones of his hands will shatter, surely. Worth it, though.  
  
“Let go,” he growls into Erik’s hair. It isn’t a plea for himself. If Erik would only stop fighting, this would be over more quickly. It wouldn’t have to hurt so much.  
  
For either of them.  
  
But Erik doesn’t. Erik fights like he’s always fought, with all of himself, and with the sort of gritty determination that so utterly captivated Charles once and forever, in each move Erik makes when he thinks he’s facing a challenge. Watching that in sword drills, in practice spars with Erik, on the battlefield—all of it left him breathless and vibrating with a want that was never supposed to be fulfilled.  
  
If he hadn’t _wanted_ Erik—  
  
If he didn’t _still_ want Erik….  
  
The movement of their bodies together is a twisted, vicious dance, Erik slamming his heel down trying to catch a foot, snapping his head back—though it’s slow, ineffective and disoriented—trying to break Charles’ nose, and when it doesn’t happen, Erik leads them into a transition, backpedaling until he finds the wall. He smashes into it, again and again, rattling both their bones and knocking the air out of their lungs. Gasping and wheezing, Charles grits his teeth and—oh, that’s his nail, ripping off against the leather.  
  
If he can hang on a little longer—Erik can’t keep this up.  
  
Hurts. Help, Erik, it hurts—but Erik is the one _hurting_. Hurting himself. Hurting them both. What good is a bond now? It doesn’t stop him from trying to squeeze Charles against the wall, to smash him there, over and over, working to damage him to the point when he’ll let go. And… there’s the sense of Erik’s mind against his own, sluggish and stunned from the blow—thank the gods—but trying, just the same, to latch on and shut him down, tear through his mind until he can’t see and can’t fight.  
  
It doesn’t work.  
  
Only a little longer.  
  
The blood feels tacky, running down from his nose where Erik’s head smacked into him. It drips down his arms; hands, too, where the leather has run through them and raked them raw, cutting the skin in places. None of that is worse than hearing Erik’s wheezing breaths, but it’s bad enough, to see physical proof of the carnage.  
  
And the bond—it’s screaming. Between the two of them, they’ve lit it up with anger and rage and fear, desperation, anything that could coat their connection with horror and betrayal. Erik is reaching for him, trying, but he’s too fuzzy, and…  
  
His intention doesn’t feel right.  
  
Erik is lashing out at him, but, even now, there’s no intention to really _damage_. With his mind so scrambled from the blow, if Erik were to have any hope of accomplishing what he’s after, he’d have to give up on the precision, and rush forward without regard to the sort of damage he’d cause. He can’t bother with precision when his mind is injured and incapable of it. He would have to purely lash out.  
  
But he isn’t doing that.  
  
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he pants into Erik’s hair, ignoring the taste of salt in his mouth and the wetness draining over his lips, the stinging in his eyes. “I love you—didn’t want—“  
  
This. The world.  
  
If it had only been the two of them, without the politics….  
  
It takes time, but, inevitably, the bouts of being slammed into the wall become increasingly feeble, and Erik’s knees finally buckle; he plunges downward with a sick crack of wood to bone as he hits the floor. It’s quick, though, small mercy, and once he’s down he’s there to stay, slumping sideways, even when Charles keeps up the hold for a little longer. If Erik is faking…  
  
He isn’t.  
  
“Erik?” Oh, gods. Erik. Erik….  
  
The belt slithers painfully out of his hand, dropping with a muted clunk to the floor next to Erik’s body and lying there, tinged with blood, as utterly innocuous as it was when Erik had it around his waist, serving its intended purpose.  
  
Once, he’d been prepared to kill Erik. He’d had the knife, he’d been ready, but… that didn’t mean thinking much about it—not about how it would _be_. Any conception of what Erik would look like, laid on the floor, had been abstract, painted in fantastical colors and shapes that didn’t reflect reality. It hadn’t been any more real than looking at a picture, painted and hung on the wall. It hadn’t been _reality._  
  
 _This_ is real.  
  
Erik doesn’t look like himself when he’s sprawled out on the ground. He’s too vulnerable, more of what he’d be, perhaps, if there hadn’t been Shaw and the years in between the death of his mother and his escape. He has the same strong jaw line that he always has had, wide shoulders, narrow waist. His eyes are closed, masking that sharp gaze, but his features are as angular as ever, his arms strong, legs long—just Erik. He’s seen Erik fight, seen what he looks like when he reaches his release; he understands that smile with too many teeth, and knows precisely how Erik frowns when he’s too tired to be bothered with any more nonsense.  
  
It shouldn’t be like this. It shouldn’t hurt this much….  
  
Kneeling down, he gets a hand on the floor next to Erik’s head and carefully notches the fingers of his free hand down below Erik’s jaw.  
  
The pulse is strong and steady, thumping against his fingertips.  
  
Kill him. Kill him, and the vacuum of power will be overwhelming. But… with Westchester’s best men now freed, there’s a chance it could be contained, that he himself could take the throne, slowly siphon power back off to the regions. If he killed Erik right now, he’d have the benefit of his telepathy again, and, yes, people can avoid that with implants and blockers, but it wouldn’t be enough. He _could_ make this work.  
  
But… Erik.  
  
The fingers of the hand under Erik’s jaw spread out, traveling up to splay along Erik’s cheek. A quick nudge tips him to the side, face falling toward Charles: Erik’s mouth drops open slightly, unrestrained by the usual tight clamp of muscle, soft and open, and gentler than he ever looks when awake.  
  
To kill Erik, he’ll have to look at that face—and do it anyway. There are a number of ways he could: slit his throat, choke him, smother him, but, no matter what, it will still be _Erik_.  
  
Erik, who has held him and kissed him, who loves him, with whom he had sex only minutes ago in the garden, who doesn’t like white wine but adores red, and who hopes his first child will be a little strategist like its bearer. Erik, his husband, his jailer, and someone who is deeply, fundamentally misguided—whose continued existence could harm thousands.  
  
Erik.  
  
Just Erik.  
  
But it can’t be _just_ Erik. If it could, none of this would have ever happened.  
  
“I’m sorry,” he whimpers, pathetic and absolutely disgusting for a man who is supposed to be a king, and who should be stronger than this. It’s pure weakness, to be here, on his knees before the man who put ink in his wrist, and who swept away what had been a good life.  
  
It would be a life for a life, this killing.  
  
There’s no knife in the near vicinity. Erik’s sword is on the table, tossed there earlier in the day. Erik never leaves it out when Charles is in the room alone, but, when it’s the two of them, he doesn’t seem particularly inclined to worry. He never had reason before. They’ve slept next to each other night after night, with Charles never showing an inclination toward murder. There was never any doubt that keeping the sword locked away when Erik isn’t there to supervise had more to do with worries about suicide.  
  
But the sword is there _now_ , and Erik is unconscious. Erik would never feel a thing if it were done right, quick….  
  
Slit his throat, then? No. No—he strokes the skin of Erik’s jawline, catching his fingers on the beginning of stubble. His own beard, when he neglects shaving long enough to grow one, is also red, despite a head of brown hair: it’s the one time he and Erik match in coloring, and, even then, it isn’t exact. But the gene is there, and any children they have could potentially be redheads.  
  
Children, yes. He could be pregnant, right now, and it wouldn’t be discernable until weeks from now. And if he _is_ with child—what’s he going to tell that child? That he killed its father?  
  
He exhales slowly, gripping down on Erik’s shoulder with his other hand.  
  
Smothering. It would be less messy. When someone gets up the courage to come find Erik, he’d be sprawled out peacefully on the floor. It would even be possible to slip the pillow under Erik’s head when the act had been finished, to leave him lying there on the floor, cradled by soft linen.  
  
But—there’s an echo of the sound of breathing, on those nights when Erik curled in close, holding him, both their chests rising and falling together. Erik’s breath had always been a pleasant tickle in his hair—he’d always shivered, though Erik was better than a furnace—and Erik had nuzzled in close, dropping kisses to his skin and hairline. He’ll have to hear that echo louder, practically screaming, if he uses a pillow.  
  
Not smothering, then.  
  
Snapping his neck would be quick. But… he’d have to touch Erik while he did it. No—that’s—it can’t. No. Just no.  
  
And that’s really it, isn’t it? He’s a coward who can’t do what’s right for the world at large, because he’s too sickeningly in love with his husband to do what needs to be done. What was it Erik had said? That he’d hoped, when it came right down to it, that—what was it? _That you wouldn’t be able to go through with it._ That. That’s what it was.  
  
Looks like he’s going to get his wish.  
  
There will still be a war. He’ll fight Erik. He’ll—what would it be like, if he were to win, and Erik had to answer to _him_? He could do to Erik what Erik has done to him, keep him locked up, force him to play along with an ideology in which he doesn’t believe. They could have children that way, raised with their guardian father not allowed out of the house, and everything will be as domestically twisted as it is right now.  
  
It won’t end like that.  
  
Common sense—well, despite what he’s failing to do, he has a little of that left. This war isn’t winnable in its totality. If they can take back the North, that’ll be enough—and then what? He’ll rule, ignore his bond for the rest of his life? Doubtful. Maybe a peace treaty, in which he—what? Returns to Erik? Plays along at being a domesticated bearer for the rest of his life?  
  
How can there possibly be a happy ending to this?  
  
Frankly, it’ll be a miracle if there’s any sort of ending at all, rather than just a sharp chop that cuts them both off from life. It will only be a cessation, in which the story is never wrapped up properly.  
  
So, what then? Staying here and waiting for Erik to wake isn’t out of the question. Erik will forgive him on the spot if he apologizes, probably even before that, once Erik sees that he’s chosen to stay.  
  
And things will go on as before.  
  
No, that’s not an option either.  
  
The last of it, then—the only thing: if he can flee Genosha, meet up with Frost as he’d planned, ally with her and Ororo, they might be able to take back the North. It’s worth hoping that they can make inroads to the South, and they’ll try, they’ll fight…  
  
And it won’t feel quite so much like he’s a useless coward who never should have had the throne in the first place. They were right, they were all right. As a bearer, he never should have—  
  
But Erik wouldn’t kill him either, and that has nothing to do with gender. It’s—he swallows down the lump in his throat and shakes his head, raking his sleeve viciously across his cheeks. Gods, he’s crying. There’s no reason to cry. This has to happen, and he’s going to get up onto his damn feet and see it through, and he’s going to give Erik a run for his money, and make a place in this world where people can go to be free of the laws Erik is going to impose. That’ll be enough. It’ll have to be. One little corner of the world, where Erik can’t touch—a piece of himself that Erik will _never_ be able to touch, no matter what else he conquers.  
  
Flattening both his hands on the floor, he reaches for the belt and, as carefully as he can, rolls Erik over onto his front. Anyone who’s spent time in the army knows how to bind a man in a variety of clever ways: a belt is almost laughably easy. Erik, when he wakes, won’t be going anywhere for a while.  
  
Unless he shouts for help.  
  
It would be quite an affront to his pride, to have to call for help after being knocked out and trussed up by his bearer, but Erik would do it. He’s pragmatic when it counts, in matters like these. In this case, he personally might not find it such an insult, when he knows his bearer is hardly the weak, delicate creature that most would suppose.  
  
That’s probably not going to make him any better disposed to waking to find that he has a strip from his own tunic shoved into his mouth and tied off at the nape of his neck.  
  
Unfortunately, though, that return to consciousness could happen sooner rather than later. Frankly, it’s a miracle it hasn’t occurred already, and if Erik wakes up and gets a lock on where he is, it wouldn’t be much trouble to take control of his telepathy and convey Erik’s will to any mind in the immediate vicinity. He wouldn’t have to bother with turning Charles’ mind inside out: only with co-opting his gift and using it to detain. Possibly his mind would still be too disoriented from the blow against the desk, but it isn’t a guarantee.  
  
But…  
  
But. There’s always a “but.” In this case, it’s a chilling option, enough to make his hands stutter over the last knot, and for him to lean in, pressing his forehead to Erik’s cheek. Seeking comfort from an unconscious man is pitiful at best, but… this is his _mind_. Cutting off his perceptions is the stuff of nightmares, the things he saw in phantom dreams as a child. Seeing the world without really feeling it—the prospect haunts, and it’s a terror he’s never quite been able to shake.  
  
He’d had the suppressor commissioned just the same.  
  
Moira had looked so horrified when he’d given it to her, but it’s never been a decision he’s had cause to regret. She was the one person who could be trusted to keep it for him, and to stop him if the need arose. It was only supposed to be a failsafe, and it had never been needed. When she’d died, there hadn’t been anyone else he’d trusted enough, and he’d put it away, down in a hidden safe in the armory. After Moira’s death, there had been too much else to think about, and giving over that kind of power to anyone else—it had been overwhelming to a grieving mind. _Later_ had always been the internal answer. Later, he’d give it to someone who could be trusted.  
  
Today, he’ll put it on himself.  
  
But, to do that, he needs to get up. _Get up, get up_ … Get a hand on the ground, push up. _Ouch_. That’d be easier if he hadn’t ripped a fingernail off just minutes ago. Too much pressure on his fingertip. Fine, legs will do just as well.  
  
By the time he gets to his feet, he’s already staggering—but at least it’s in the direction of the door. The problem, though—and there always is one—the _problem_ … he should take something with him. His mind should be sufficient, but it wouldn’t hurt to have a weapon ready. His father’s sword is hanging on the bedpost, but fat lot of good that’ll do, when it’s dulled.  
  
Erik’s sword, then.  
  
Once, twice, and then again—he clenches his fingers up into fists. Go, go—and _there_ , just under his hand. Erik’s sword is a little big for him, but it’ll work well enough, and it comes with a scabbard and belt too, how handy. It’s mere practiced movement to cinch it about his waist and to—  
  
The brush of cloth under his hand pulls him up short. Erik’s nightshirt. Erik had tossed it there at some point, careless, eager to be rid of it for the day and probably frustrated about his arm. He gets like that. The shirt, though, smells like him, and the temptation is too much: a quick inhale, with the shirt against his nose.  
  
He should leave it. There’s no reason to take it with him. All it would amount to is an unnecessary indulgence.  
  
But he tucks it between the hilt of the sword and his hip anyway, and finally— _finally_ —totters back toward the door. Worse than a newborn colt, really. One would almost think he hasn’t needed to make difficult decisions before.  
  
He walked like that after Moira died: drunk with the hurt, and unsteady, and he’d had to rest his hands on the wall and calm his mind for a good ten minutes before he’d been able to march out that door and give the news that the queen was dead.  
  
That kind of time simply isn’t a luxury at this point.  
  
Luckily, the people at the door this time around aren’t waiting for a message. It’s a wonder they didn’t hear the fight—except they likely did. It isn’t as though he and Erik haven’t screamed at each other before, and the kind of clatter that was going on, banging into walls—the guards are probably used to that by now. Not to this degree, but it surely wouldn’t surprise them. They might have mistaken it for sex. Or, they might not have cared in the first place.  
  
Erik could be murdering him, and the guards wouldn’t do a thing to stop it.  
  
Lovely prospect.  
  
Thinking on that makes it the tiniest bit easier to reach out and seize the guards’ minds. Not very interesting—thinking on lunch, on, ah, yes, the commotion inside the room, along with—hmm, well, _that_ isn’t particularly flattering. Or it is, rather. Though he can’t possibly _really_ look like that when Erik is fucking him. If he looked _that_ good he’d do better to take up a profession following the troops. It’d pay a hefty sum, with those kinds of goods to offer.  
  
The guard nearest the door comes when prompted, pacing mechanically into the room and settling over Erik, watching him with blank eyes and no particular motivation of his own. One suggestion, and he’s reduced to this.  
  
 _Knock out your king when he wakes. Do as little damage as possible while remaining effective. Do it only once. When he wakes a second time, allow it._  
  
That’s it. Simple, all things considered.  
  
What’s not so simple? Taking one last look at Erik before he leaves.  
  
No one should be that motionless. It’s not the same as when he curls close to Erik at night. Skin to skin is full of life, and Erik’s warmth seeps between them with such ready ease that it would be impossible to mistake him for dead.  
  
Like this, it’s dreadfully easy.  
  
And that, more than anything, is how it finally becomes possible to turn away.  
  
Erik will be fine. He’ll wake with a headache, and the guard will be gone. He’ll search for Charles, and he’ll rage, but there will be nothing he can do, and soon he’ll have his hands full anyhow with containing the mess that the prison break will have created.  
  
Damn fine mess, too. Emma ought to be commended.  
  
All of that, it makes sense, and it’s true, mostly. But there’s always something left out—and, with a hand on the door, that’s not so easy to erase. Because the first thing Erik will do when he wakes? It won’t be tracking down soldiers or raging, or even searching.  
  
It will be reaching down the bond.  
  
Grinding his teeth down into his lower lip—pain is good, pain clears the mind—Charles wrenches the door open. Don’t think about the bond, don’t think about how agonizing it will be to slip on a suppressor that’ll kill that link.  
  
Don’t think. Just walk.  
  
And he does. Step after step after step.  
  
No one stops him, but that’s more a matter of deterrence before they have any opportunity to try. He must be projecting hard enough to keep everyone out of this entire wing, let alone whatever hallway he’s in.  
  
About halfway down to the armory, the stirrings of awareness begin down at the other end of the bond. The sensation is quick, no more than wispy tendrils of thought trying to thicken and solidify, but they vanish before they can become anything substantial, snapped away by orders implanted in a guard’s mind.  
  
 _Keep him there_ he sends briefly into the guard’s mind. He could order him to knock Erik out again when he regains consciousness, but each blow to the head becomes increasingly dangerous. Actually braining Erik is not a desirable activity.  
  
Keep going, then. If he can’t kill Erik, then he needs to leave, and he needs to do it fast, before Erik wakes again. If he has the suppressor on before Erik wakes, the guard will take care of keeping Erik where he is. No one will come for Erik in the next half hour or so anyway: no one would dare, with the order he gave.  
  
It all seems so simple. Or it would, if it didn’t ache so much. But what he’s doing—it isn’t physically difficult.  
  
None of that explains why, by the time he slips into the armory, he’s shaking. An honest-to-gods trembling in his hands, violent enough that the first few attempts to grip the doorknob fail and he has to take a moment, sucking down air, before he can try again, get his fingers wrapped around it, and tug it open.  
  
It’s a large room, the armory. Filled with an overflow of weapons that won’t do him an ounce of good now. There are guns, miracle of all miracles, though the ammunition available for them is limited, and, when the guns break, they don’t have the pieces to replace them. Erik was always good for that, making new parts. It’s the only reason Erik had told him to carry a gun in the first place—and he’d been better with it than with a sword. Having Erik available to make him ammunition on demand has been a splendid bonus.  
  
It’s the work of a quick indulgence that has him reaching out and snagging a handgun and shoulder holster. Nice. It’ll do. There, a dozen or so boxes of ammunition, and a sack to hold it all.  
  
And, now, for the final thing.  
  
There, at the end of the armory, nearly out of sight, is what he came for in the first place. Anyone who wasn’t looking would miss it, as well they should. It’s a line of box shelving—innocuous, and filled with cloths, polish, odds and ends. But there, in the very corner of the rightmost box, there’s a tiny metal latch at the back.  
  
Slide a nail under it—one that is still attached to his finger—and tug, and the wood comes loose, opening into a shelf set back into the wall. Nothing all that impressive about the inside, but it’s what his fingers close around that matters.  
  
And here he’d hoped never to have to wear this.  
  
Really, though, hope hasn’t done him much good lately. Why in the world should this be any different?  
  
It’s not. Obviously it isn’t. If it were, the contraption wouldn’t look quite so much like a crown, just the sort to mock him. It’s silver, nothing especially intricate—only a slim silver band, elastic in four places, in order that it might fit more easily onto his head. The important part, though, is the silver discs that he picks up. They’re not all that large, maybe an inch in diameter, and they’re thin, but they’re ominous in their own strange way.  
  
This… won’t be pleasant.  
  
Of all the things he ought to be thankful for… the pain of putting on telepathic headgear shouldn’t be at the top of the list. It _should_ hurt, though. Wearing this is unnatural and horrid, and it’s perfect justice that, when he presses the first disk to his right temple, the tiny spikes dig into the skin and sting his nerves. The spikes aren’t deep, only meant to penetrate the first layer of skin, but it’s no massage, that’s for sure. Like sticking a needle under the first layer of skin only, he doesn’t bleed, and the second disc is no different, and—oh, really, there’s no need to flinch.  
  
Not that his body is much inclined to listen to him these days.  
  
But if it won’t listen? He’ll do what’s necessary to correct it. “Necessary” being putting the metal band over the top of the discs, shuddering at how it clicks, magnetized, into place, adding an extra layer of protection.  
  
Protection never felt so much like suppression. It’s not so much that the world goes quiet—he’s always had to open himself in order to hear others, ever since he’d learned how to put up blocks. It’s not as though the world is always in his head. That doesn’t mean much, unfortunately, when the knowledge that he _can’t_ reach out is now battering him from the inside of his skull. Trapped, nowhere for his mind to go.  
  
And the bond….  
  
Gone. It’s that simple. Well, no, not simple. It’s not _gone_. It’s there, but it’s only his end, with the other cut off, and, unconscious or not, Erik surely must be twitching. His own skin is near about ready to crawl away. The urge to squirm is practically overwhelming, driven by sheer _wrongness_ , crawling under his skin with the temerity of a thousand tiny insects.  
  
Erik—to feel—to feel Erik—want to feel—  
  
He shouldn’t. To _want_ Erik back—has he finally gone truly insane?  
  
Who could ever tell? These last few weeks, he was half there anyway.  
  
Wanting that back—is _wrong_. So, again: turn toward the door, keep walking. He has a shirt, a sword, and a gun, and he knows the secret passages out of Westchester. Erik does too, courtesy of sensing the metal in their walls, but that’s hardly an issue at the moment. It’s a matter of getting beyond the walls, and then it won’t be much trouble to steal a horse. He can ride out before Erik is ever found and he’ll be behind rebel lines before Erik has the chance to follow. Then, release the horse and it’ll find it’s way home, with no one the wiser of which way he’s gone.  
  
Simple.  
  
So: Just. Keep. Walking.  
  
 _Go,_ and don’t look back.


	31. Nine Months Later

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please take a moment to look at the gorgeous artwork that palalife made for the story! I'm so excited! Artwork! 
> 
> http://palalife.tumblr.com/post/94699840383/tuesday-plays-the-piper-by-sperare-chapter-30
> 
> Also: there's a time skip here, so if I've missed explaining something, as always I'd be grateful if you'd drop a comment and let me know. Potentially, it might be something that will be addressed later in the story, but it might also be something I've overlooked and need to fix. Ah, the perils of being unbetaed.

[Nine Months Later]  
  
He talks to Moira sometimes, in the dead of night. Not really, obviously—she’s dead, and it would be insanity to imagine otherwise—but more the memory of her, the lingering sensation of her in his mind. That’s the thing with telepaths—or with him, anyway. Maybe it’s different with Frost. Asking her to confirm or deny isn’t particularly appealing—not when that would require actually wanting to know.  
  
But, for him, the impressions of people who have left him linger in the mind, teasing at his consciousness. Most people would call that memory, but it’s more than that. Pulling back up a memory isn’t beyond him, and, if he wanted, he could lose himself in it, in his own mind. As a child, that had been a terrifying potentiality. It had seemed far too imminently possible, and, while he hasn’t considered it in years, it’s back with a vengeance now—unsurprisingly, when it’s least welcome.  
  
David is nearly a year and a half old now, big enough that he totters around under his own power, constantly terrifying the entire household with his newfound capacity to explore. He’s even begun babbling words. Thank the gods that the nanny from Westchester is back. David’s antics are manageable now, but, in a few months, they won’t be.  
  
Yes. In a few months. Like counting down to an explosion—or so Ororo appears to believe.  
  
“I’m sorry, what?”  
  
This wasn’t the way Ororo was supposed to find out. If she hadn’t marched into his tent with only a cursory warning, this wouldn’t have happened. It’s not exactly her fault—anyone could mistake his garbled noises for permission to enter—but it’s happened nonetheless, and it wasn’t as though he would have been able to hide it from her much longer anyhow. Better her than Frost. Frost is going to be _furious_.  
  
In this case, she might actually be justified. Of all the foolish things….  
  
“You heard me correctly,” he mutters, reaching over to pluck David up off the floor and to the pry the toy boat out of his mouth. He’s chewing on everything these days. Worse, too, since he started walking and found that he could appropriate new toys for himself, rather than waiting for others to fetch them for him.  
  
“How the hell—?”  
  
“In the usual way.”  
  
“But—“  
  
“About four months ago.”  
  
“Gods, Charles, you can’t be serious.”  
  
She doesn’t ask who the father is, bless her. Though, she must know. As it stands, almost no one else outside of the army will figure it, but anyone with all the information and a decent memory for logistics will put the pieces together. There’s no real shame in it, technically, but to be so pathetic, to practically spread his legs during less than a few hours of time together—  
  
It’s nice of her, not to comment, that’s all.  
  
Ororo pinches the bridge of her nose. “Pregnant. Charles….”  
  
“I won’t be able to hide it for much longer.”  
  
“And what are you going to do?”  
  
He shrugs, bouncing David on his knee. It isn’t as though he hasn’t thought about it, but when it comes right down to it, there isn’t much that _can_ be done. Sure, there are… ways. But in a world where the population is so fragile, if he were caught there are precious few people who would absolve him. Most would want his blood. And to ask Hank to do something so risky would be unforgiveable.  
  
More to the point, getting rid of the baby had felt wrong from the second he’d considered it.  
  
It was too soon. It wasn’t supposed to happen. But… it’s a child. And his stomach has already begun to round, just a little, but noticeably. The presence of the child is there, and, when he talks to Moira at night, he’s begun telling her about the baby, about David too, and about how his two children will play together, and the places he’ll take them, the things he’ll do for them….  
  
There was never any real chance that, once he was pregnant—once he could _feel_ the baby—he wouldn’t want a second child. It was never about the _child_ , or about wanting to be a father. Wanting the child is not the same thing as wanting to subject another little life to the mess of his reality.  
  
“The timing is—Charles, this is _insane_.”  
  
The timing is atrocious, no denying that. “I know. We’ve only just reestablished the border of Westchester, and I know we’re at a stalemate—but—“  
  
Ororo sighs and fixes him with an open stare. She’s good at that, with those soulful eyes of hers. That’s what happens, when a person sees too much. His are probably not all that different. “Any day—you _know_ that. Any day, Lehnsherr could be at our lines again. We don’t know his next move.”  
  
“I’m only a little over four months along. I have another month or so before I begin to really show—“  
  
“It won’t be enough. And if Lehnsherr finds out—“  
  
“Then I’d wager he’ll come to the same conclusions as you have. It won’t matter. He can’t simply waltz behind enemy lines and pluck me out of my tent.”  
  
“Do you want him to?”  
  
What the hell? David must sense his sudden discomfort—and not even through his mind, given the suppressors—because his son jerks back, grabbing upward and latching his hands onto Charles’ cheeks, pulling his daddy’s face down to meet his own. “Dada! Mad?”  
  
Not as such. But David doesn’t quite have the vocabulary for “shocked” as of yet. “No, Love,” he chokes, carefully detaching his son’s hands from his face and—it isn’t _easy_ , forcing a smile and clapping his son’s hands together, playing with the noise of the sharp smack that the motion produces. It would be worse if he had to worry about shielding his emotions.  
  
The blessings of the suppressors are few and far between, but this does happen to be one of them.  
  
“You’re wearing his nightshirt,” Ororo points out, almost guiltily.  
  
Gods. That isn’t—it isn’t _fair_ —  
  
But what the hell _is_ fair these days?  
  
“How do you know I’m not simply wearing an oversized shirt?”  
  
But he’s already pushing the sleeves up his arms, fidgeting when they immediately slip back down, dropping past his wrists to engulf his hands. The shirt is the best version of an embrace that he can find at the moment, and swimming in its folds of fabric is a comfort.  
  
Ororo sighs and fixes him with a look. Who knew her eyebrow could climb that high? Certainly not David, who squeals in delight and claps his chubby little hands all on his own, extending his arms toward her. “’Roro!”  
  
Clever boy. It’s impossible not to smile at the sight of him. And, yes, all right: he hands David over to Ororo, giving in to the smile that the sight tugs out from inside of him.  
  
“You carry his sword too, though it’s a little big for you,” she adds, but her face softens when she takes David, grasping him under the arms and lifting him into her lap. The chair she’s in is a bit higher than the bed on which Charles is seated, and David appears to like the added height well enough, tilting his chin up and peering around the room. His bravery snowballs, and soon he’s planting his palms on Ororo’s shoulder, pushing himself to his feet in her lap, trying to peer over her head.  
  
She lets him try it, hands steady on his waist, stabilizing him as he gains a new vantage point and amuses himself all in one go. “You _always_ wear that shirt to bed. At first I thought it had to do with the scent, but you’ve washed it so many times—“  
  
“It’s not the scent.” It’s nothing defined. It’s just… it’s _Erik’s_.  
  
“Do you _want_ to go home, Charles?”  
  
“I _am_ home. Westchester _is_ my home.” Gathering up the edge of the standard issue military blanket—dull grey, not especially thick—and pushing it to the side, he slides back a few inches on the mattress.  
  
“Most people would say a bearer’s home is wherever his guardian is.”  
  
“At one point in time, most people were content to follow Shaw. Do you truly wish to argue that the majority is always correct?”  
  
She scoffs, earning an interested tap from David, who, apparently fascinated with her mouth now, repeatedly tugs at her cheek with his chubby fingers, doing his best to make her repeat the noise. Ororo, lovely woman that she is, merely catches his hands and draws them away, sweeping him up with her free arm quickly enough to make him squeak in delight, before settling him back onto her lap. “They say a repressed bond can drive you mad.”  
  
“Whoever ‘they’ are, they do not appear to have noticed that, on occasion, pairs do not die at precisely the same moment.”  
  
Ah, progress: she chuckles. “Very witty. But I think you miss him.”  
  
Erik.  
  
Some days, it’s difficult to think, for how much he—not wants to return to what was, no, not with the locked doors and grinding stress of worry—but… perhaps a meeting, a time with no strings attached, no anger, no bitterness, where he and Erik could sit and talk, sleep the night together in a bed, and not be battered about by any part of the world.  
  
That’s not an especially viable prospect when he and his husband constitute two opposing sides of a war.  
  
“If you’re tired of holding him, you can call Jean,” he offers. Avoidance at its best—but it _works._  
  
Ororo very obviously doesn’t miss his evasion, but beyond a pinch in her cheeks, she lets it slide, and simply shakes her head. “It’s fine. And Jean could use a morning off.”  
  
Poor Jean, always running ragged after an energetic toddler. “You make it sound as though I don’t frequently give her time to herself,” he answers, cracking a grin.  
  
She waves him off. “Don’t be ridiculous.” David, the spoiled little thing that he is, mistakes the motion for an attempt to play, and seizes her hand, shaking it. “After how long it took us to convince you not to bring him to strategy meetings? We were beginning to think he was attached to your hip.”  
  
After being separated from him, the idea of letting David out of his sight had been… unpleasant, to say the least. Jean is, of course, infinitely capable. Honestly, the kind of power that girl has, and if Frost hadn’t put those blocks on her—someday, she’ll be able to control the scope of her power, but not yet. She has a fiery personality to match her hair, and until she learns iron self-control, she has no hope of ruling her powers. They’d rule _her_ , and then it wouldn’t really be _her_ anymore at all. She’s a lovely girl, though—by this point, nearly a woman. Seventeen years old: she’s of age to marry, but, seeing as she’s under his care… Seventeen is so very young. She has time. Why rush her? Bearing a child of her own, marrying… there’s no hurry. The population won’t flounder on her account alone.  
  
Though, Scott does appear to be more than a little interested.  
  
It wouldn’t be so bad, Jean and Scott. He’d treat her well. And, if he didn’t, Alex would give him the thrashing of a lifetime. Being a bearer himself, Alex would hardly stand for anything else—and he’s quite a force to be reckoned with, when he wants to be. Of course, gods know, he’ll probably have enough to be getting on with himself, if the looks he shares with Armando are any indication.  
  
“I wouldn’t blame you, you know.”  
  
Glancing up, he drinks in the sight of her even gaze. Other people’s calm is half of his own these days, and Ororo is good for that—for settling him when he can’t settle himself. But, in this case, there’s a bit too much tension ringing her eyes: a little more, and she’ll be narrowing them, regarding him with scrutiny.  
  
David chirps unhappily, mouth pursing. The mood has caught him, and he wraps it around himself in a ways a child shouldn’t, beginning to fuss. It improves when Ororo sets him down and he’s able to totter back over to Charles, but his plump cheeks are dimpled with the fervor of his frown, and he’s fixed his large blue eyes on Charles’ face with an expression approaching determination. “Daddy?”  
  
David isn’t his spitting image, thank the gods. His face is more along the lines of Moira’s, and his hair promises to be straighter than Charles’ own. If not for his eyes, he’d favor Moira almost entirely. Too bad about the eyes: even knowing they’re a mirror image of his own gaze, Charles can’t always resist the guileless openness of them. David gets what he wants probably far more than he should.  
  
Now, for instance: he swings his son up onto his lap without hesitation, jostling his knee until David jerks about happily, riding out the bumps. “Again! Again!” And, so, yes, again.  
  
“It’s not a crime to miss him, Charles.”  
  
When Ororo fixes on a topic, she’s not likely to let it go. Frost will needle and slice until she guts her subject and the information falls at her feet, but Ororo approaches frankly, always compassionate, but forceful just the same. Unfortunately, on someone like him, her tactics are devastatingly effective.  
  
“You can say it, you know,” he replies quietly, fixing his eyes firmly on David.  
  
“Say what?”  
  
“That Erik wasn’t all that bad. That anything I experienced was nowhere near what you had to endure. You’re right, on both counts. Erik is misguided in many ways, but he… does love me. And he never—not like Shaw—he wouldn’t….”  
  
When he does chance a look up at her, it’s to find her frowning. Her mouth is twisted, pulled out of place by her teeth as she chews thoughtfully at her bottom lip. “Three hundred years is a very long time,” she admits. “But it’s not a competition. The whole system is broken, Charles, and what we both went through—everything, all of the mess with bearers and guardians—it’s evidence of a larger problem.”  
  
“I should say so.” Patting David’s back, he sets his son on the floor and watches him toddle off, diving for one of his toys that had rolled away into the corner. For a child who moves about with his father constantly, living in a portable tent a good portion of the time, he’s nevertheless amassed a vaguely alarming army of toys.  
  
“What Lehnsherr did to you is wrong.”  
  
The baldness of the statement is enough to catch him off guard, and he straightens up, blinking owlishly.  
  
Releasing her lip from between her teeth, she crosses her legs and leans forward, resting her elbows on her knees as she watches him. “You won’t hear that enough. Not enough people actually believe it, and fewer still will voice their thoughts. From what you’ve said, I suspect that even Lehnsherr thinks he’s truly doing what’s right for you. But that doesn’t make it the truth.”  
  
“I don’t—“  
  
“I spent nearly three hundred years with Shaw.” Yes, and it shows in how her face hardens as she begins to speak, leeching the softness out of her cheeks and hollowing the life out of her eyes. _This_ is the woman he found locked away that day in Genosha. “He constructed this system with intent, Charles: it’s meant to oppress. Shaw was smart enough to know that whoever controls reproduction controls society. He found a way to put himself at the top of a hierarchy that kept everyone in line. Maybe the gods exist, I don’t know. There was always religion, even before the storms, but Shaw—he took it and used it for his own purpose. In some ways, Lehnsherr was as much a victim as you are, but society—“ She sighs. “Society is what Shaw crafted it to be, and Lehnsherr is what Shaw’s system made him.”  
  
The smile that he forces up onto his face feels brittle, but there’s no other expression that would fit the situation. “Aren’t we all?”  
  
“I don’t know. I’d like not to think about it. I’ve had _centuries_ to think about it, and I’m not sure I like the answer.”  
  
“Erik must seem lovely to you in comparison.”  
  
She shrugs. “In some ways, he seems almost… theoretical. It’s difficult to think of him as anything more than a player in a long line of men who have responded to the things that Shaw has done. I have no concept of him personally.”  
  
“He’s a good man, just… wrong, I suppose. His actions are all wrong, even when the motivation is good.”  
  
“Loving _you_ , you mean?” Anyone else might be taunting him, but Ororo—it isn’t quite the same. She quirks an eyebrow, her eyes skipping over to David, who’s latched happily onto a ball in the corner and is currently drumming his hands against it with great enthusiasm. “Good motivation, bad results?”  
  
“I don’t know. I’m not sure I really understand it much at all. What he’s done to my life—I never would have thought someone could damage me so much while genuinely wanting what he thinks is in my best interest.”  
  
Her lips thin out into a bitter smile. “In some ways, Charles, I think I had the better deal.”  
  
“How do you mean?”  
  
“Shaw didn’t love me. I could hate him, and I never had to question it. In a way, it was pure. You—it’s a puzzle, trying to untangle love and hate. It was never as personal with Shaw—and so it never hurt in the way that you’re experiencing.”  
  
Of all the subjects he’d rather not address… Those things that keep him up at night are better left in dreams, and, for the time being, they have more imminent issues to worry about—topics where Ororo hopefully won’t be able to see so deeply into him as she can with… all of this. She knows, because she’s been there. But being known so thoroughly—it’s terrifying, and, as wonderful as Ororo is, it leaves him with the inclination to withdraw, to pull up inside of himself and lock away the churning mess that is his relationship with Erik.  
  
“Should I tell him?”  
  
“What, about the pregnancy? He’s going to find out eventually, regardless.”  
  
“I know.” But it weighs just the same, and it doesn’t help, raking his hands through his hair—stupid, stressed trait—but at this point he’s willing to try nearly anything to calm himself. From the moment he’d realized exactly what the morning sickness meant, he hasn’t been able to settle, and it’s been like bugs eating their way under his skin.  
  
In some ways, it makes sense that his thoughts turn to Erik. Pregnant bearers are naturally inclined toward their guardian’s presence. Just another sick joke from nature, though it makes sense, in the wake of the storms. The world is dangerous, and bearers are prized: a pregnancy creates vulnerability, and, in order to protect the child, it’s biologically expedient to keep close the parent who isn’t hampered by an increasingly unwieldy weight gain.  
  
If only that’s all it was… but it’s never so simple. He’s missed Erik from the moment he left. That is, left the _first_ time, in the aftermath of Shaw’s death. Biology accounts for the draw… but it doesn’t mean anything at all in terms of enjoying Erik’s personality, his cleverness, his sense of humor—any of it. That is solely _Erik_.  
  
It’s not even all that difficult to admit. He has long since come to the conclusion that, if things were different, he and Erik would have been a good match. They were friends first. There was reason for that—reasons why they’d become friends, and why it had worked.  
  
This isn’t the same. This is so beyond friendship: tracing the tangle back to the beginning would only tie things up worse than ever.  
  
“If he hears it from someone else,” Ororo presses on, and while her voice is understanding, it’s firm, “have you really thought through what he’ll do?”  
  
Yes, and that’s what’s terrifying. Erik isn’t level-headed at the best of times. If he finds out about this pregnancy….  
  
It is far, far better to head this off before it causes more trouble than is already inevitable.  
  
“If you wouldn’t mind, Ororo, perhaps you could call Jean back in to watch David? And then, if you would, send for Emma Frost?”  
  
Ororo’s shoulders slope downward, falling with the silent release of air from her mouth. He hadn’t known she’d been holding her breath, but he can’t very well blame her. Most of the world is holding its breath now, waiting on him and Erik, to see what they’ll do. “You’ll use Emma? I thought—”  
  
“I haven’t changed my mind. I _don’t_ trust her. She’s loyal to you because you raised her; she doesn’t owe me the same loyalty.”  
  
Whatever loyalty Frost had, it’s been so completely funneled into the few people for whom she has a care that there’s no a drop left over for anyone else. She’d flay him alive if it got her what she wanted—and he doesn’t need telepathy to see that. It’s there on her face in every paralyzed, thin smile that shimmers unnaturally; in the deadness of her eyes. She doesn’t _feel_ like other people—and that isn’t a dearth of the capability, but simply of the application, in the case of most people she encounters. But Ororo—she won’t see that properly. Nor should she be expected to see it. Frost is, for all intents and purposes, her child, and the unfaltering loyalty that she does show toward Ororo goes a long way toward altering Ororo’s perceptions.  
  
“I know,” Ororo admits, dipping her head in slight acknowledgement. And then, when that holds the moment too long and tips over into formality, she sighs, and the poise rushes out of her body, leaving exhaustion behind. “I regret taking her in, you know—not because she isn’t the best thing in my life. She _is_. For years, she was the only happiness I had. But… look where it got her.”  
  
Yes. But not because of anything Ororo did. “It kept her alive. Alive means there’s always hope that things can change for the better.”  
  
“I’m not sure I always believe that. I thought so too, when I found her, and Shaw—“ She raises her hand, kneading at her temples with her thumb and forefinger. “Shaw barely noticed. So long as I came when he called, that bastard—he—“ She swallows. “He was happy to let me have a child to raise, a gifted orphan who wasn’t my blood and would never be claimed as such. She was no threat to his rule. As far as he was concerned, I think he thought she’d grow, whither, and die like most people. It wasn’t until she became a teenager….”  
  
Ororo cuts off there, turning away and tightening up, clenching one hand on her knee. “I know,” he answers simply, and does her the courtesy of looking away, over toward his son.  
  
David has now taken to pushing the ball in front of him, plopping down on it and sliding off onto the floor. Thankfully it’s a small ball, and, if he goes face first into the floor as it looks like he might, it won’t do more than sting. A lesson learned, then, and he won’t do it again.  
  
Some people would argue that he ought to stop David, but he isn’t one to coddle, in the sense of prohibiting his son from learning through mistakes. He’s a child: he’ll acquire scrapes and bruises. But the thought of someone touching his son in his teenage years? There will never be anything that could ease the mad rage that would light off. To think that Shaw plucked his wife’s adopted daughter from under her mother’s nose—that he… defiled her so carelessly… and there’s a child somewhere, though neither Ororo nor Frost will say where.  
  
That’s their prerogative. And, watching David, he can’t imagine he’d do much different. That child of Frost’s is protected by her anonymity, and there’s no reason to do anything to change that.  
  
“Shaw deserved to die,” he says quietly, casting his glance back toward Ororo. Her own stare has lengthened, and, whatever she’s looking at, it’s nothing anyone else can see. “Erik has done many morally reprehensible things, but he did the world a favor by ending Shaw. I wish, for all our sakes, that Erik were the kind of man who would have let him live, but—I never felt that on account of the act itself. It was just—I worried about what effect revenge would have on Erik.”  
  
His words slowly draw her back in, and she nods mutedly, only half committed to the motion, but there enough to count as present. “I’ll go get Emma,” she tells him, pushing up and out of her chair. “How should I tell her you’re planning to do this?”  
  
“I need her to block Erik. If I take the inhibitor off, Erik can take control of my mind and, by extension, my telepathy. I can overpower Frost within the matter of a minute or so, but, if it becomes clear Erik has overstepped his bounds and taken my gifts, that’ll be more than enough time to get the inhibitor back on me.”  
  
That earns him a half-quirked smile. “She’ll like that better than having to contact Lehnsherr directly.”  
  
“She has every reason to dislike him.”  
  
The sound of Ororo’s laugh cuts him cold through the chest. It shouldn’t. This is Erik’s doing, not his, but… “The entire world knows she’s a bearer, thanks to Lehnsherr, Charles. Of all the things you’d understand—“  
  
“I hate him too, sometimes. He loves me, but he’s selfish about it. And I hate him for that.”  
  
She nods, hand on the flap of his tent, clutching the fabric. “Exactly. But, in her case, there’s nothing to temper it. Because, Charles? You love him as much as you hate him.” Miracle of all miracles, there’s no accusation in her words, but just bland fact, almost pitying. They could be discussing a terminal illness, and her manner wouldn’t be out of place.  
  
Is this a matter of acknowledging a weakness, lest it overtake him? A very pleasant possibility, in context, when the alternative merely feels like failure.  
  
Regardless of the answer, she’s gone in the next few seconds, door flap dropping closed behind her, jerking with the oilcloth’s weight. It won’t keep anyone out, but David can’t easily shove through it.  
  
In a little over four months, there will be a new baby to consider. New accommodations to make within this tent, if, indeed, he plans to stay in the field. On that count, probably not: Westchester is secure enough for the time being that he could return there for the birth. The combined weight of Westchester, Boston and the Upper North holding the line at Westchester’s border has created such a concentrated military determination to hold the border that Westchester may actually be one of the safest places he could be.  
  
And also one of the most stagnant. The goal was always to push Erik out past Westchester, but there had been that lingering hope that, maybe, with luck, the border could be extended downward a bit further. But with New Hartford and the Midlands siding with Erik, there are too many troops.  
  
They’ve reached the end of their campaign. From this point onward, it will be a matter of holding the line where it’s been drawn. Practically speaking, it will mean two functioning governments, and a split world. His kingdom, and Erik’s kingdom.  
  
Two worlds apart, and now a baby, and David, and—  
  
Charles closes his eyes and bends back in the chair, popping the aches in his back and feeling muscles crackle from too long sitting. Arching, he tucks his arms behind his head and tries to stretch, maybe pull the release of tension down and actually internalize it. He’s fighting his husband—he’s fighting—  
  
But he opens his eyes too quickly, the same time as he’s lowering his arms, and there’s a flash of black, neat letters—and his breath punches out of his chest. _Don’t touch it_ his common sense snaps, but he already has his fingers hovering over the slightly raised lettering, and it’s a matter of dipping his finger down to skim, to trace the pattern that etches out into Erik’s name.  
  
That’s a mark that doesn’t go away. Outside his tent, he wears long sleeves, no matter what the weather, but it’s not something he can hide from _himself._ How very hard he’s tried. Sleeping with his arm pressed under his stomach, lest he wake up and see it; wrapping it in a bandage and going days on end without getting his wrist wet and necessitating the removal of the dressing; even, on one memorable occasions, choking out sobs and clawing with his fingernails until the area was red and scraped, oozing bleeding. None of it had done any good.  
  
The mark is still there, stark against white skin, and catching his eye anytime it comes into view.  
  
It isn’t disappearing. It won’t.  
  
It won’t, and he stares, and stares, and stares whenever it isn’t covered and he’s alone, left at leisure to get caught in its loops and scrawls.  
  
Too often, the mark stares back.  
  
And, some days, he can’t breathe through the scrutiny.


	32. Chapter 32

If Emma Frost is disconcerted by the fact that he’s pregnant, she doesn’t show it. At a word from Ororo, she appears promptly at his tent, knocking back the cloth over the door and marching in without an invitation. Ororo shoots him an apologetic look as she enters behind Frost, but he waves her off, dismissing the attempt at an apology. It isn’t hers to make. In the context of the situation, they have far larger things to worry about anyway.  
  
“What the hell, Xavier?” she asks, planting herself in front of him and staring down at him where he’s seated at his desk. Frost strives not to show anything so vulnerable as confusion, but the irritation sluicing off of her is rather like it, albeit with more hostility involved.  
  
Honestly, though, what’s there to be confused about? It’s not all that hard to understand. “What part of this admittedly less-than-ideal situation is escaping you?” he asks dryly, looking up from the book in his hand. So much for that: he snaps it shut, nestling it down among the papers scattered in front of him.  
  
Frost rolls her eyes. “You had the good fortune not to find yourself impregnated after weeks of living with your husband. A few months ago, you even ran a campaign to drive his military forces back out of your region, ensuring that he would have no viable way to force pregnancy on you in the near future either. And you threw that good fortune away by letting him fuck you when you met with him for treaty negotiations? What the hell was on the table at that meeting?!”  
  
Actually, _he_ had been on the table, but that’s hopefully not what she’s asking—not that it’s any of her business. She has quite a lot of nerve, storming in here and planting herself in front of him, hands on her hips and color rising in her cheeks as her tone simultaneously hits a near-screech.  
  
“Nothing worth taking, or I would have made a deal,” he answers stiffly.  
  
Erik’s repeated threats rolled up in pleas hadn’t constituted much of a diplomatic event. Although, Erik had been remarkably restrained verbally, repressing most of his usual attempts at lecturing—but what he’d missed in that, he’d made up for with a stone solid gaze that had promised more trouble to come if he didn’t get his way.  
  
And he _didn’t_. Now, gods only know when the other shoe will drop.  
  
Frost wrinkles her nose disdainfully. “That is, assuming it _is_ Lehnsherr’s.”  
  
Oh, for gods’ sake. Ororo must feel the same: she bursts out a sharp breath and wheels around on Frost, glaring. For a moment, the air feels just that little bit _sharper_. “That’s out of line.”  
  
“Would you be more favorably disposed toward my child if he or she _weren’t_ Erik’s?” he shoots back, folding both hands protectively over his stomach and lifting an eyebrow. There’s no actual threat to the child—Frost may bluster, but she won’t hurt the baby—but instinct isn’t so easily beaten. In this case, though, instinct can’t be attributed to his status as a pregnant bearer. This is simply the result of being a _parent_. David is equally as worthy of protection—and gods know some days it’s quite an act of will not to simply snatch him up and hold him close and safe.  
  
“You know, Frost,” he presses on icily, “I would have thought you’d have a touch of empathy: I always assumed I’d be the only one Erik would out as a bearer, but it’s nice to have company just the same.”  
  
A snarl rips out past her lips, and she looks near about ready to lunge. But she pulls back at the last minute, posture settling down into a wakeful kind of rest, curled and ready to strike with a moment’s notice. “Not all of us like being fucked by Lehnsherr,” she answer primly.  
  
Sex jokes: how charming. “You wouldn’t know,” he counters rather dully. “And, yes, I’ve seen that particular memory.” Perhaps he should enjoy this more, but slinging insults at others has never much satisfied him. And Frost—it’s difficult to hate her. Easy, if one only takes her personality into account, but knowing her history draws up some deeply dug well of pity.  
  
The barb has the intended effect of pushing Frost back and cutting off her vitriol before she gets properly started. “I didn’t ask you here to insult you,” he concedes after a few seconds of vicious staring from Frost. Crossing his arms, he gets his legs under him and pushes up to his feet, meeting her on eye level. “I need to talk to Erik. I’ll have to take my inhibitor off to do that, and, as I’m sure you’re well aware, that leaves me vulnerable: if Erik so wishes, he could take control of my telepathy and have every soldier in this camp surrendering to him in a twelve-year-old’s falsetto.” That’s a tad exaggerated, but it gets the point across. “If he takes control of my gift, I need you to stop him. He won’t be able to override you quickly, and, if you’re monitoring my control or lack thereof, you’ll be able to set in and delay him long enough for Ororo to knock me out and get the inhibitor back on me. Am I clear?”  
  
Arms crossed, she taps a pointer finger against her elbow, humming. “Sugar, I’ll save Ororo the trouble: he co-opts your mind, and _I_ will knock you out.”  
  
“I’m sure you’d enjoy that very much.”  
  
“It’s not an opportunity I’d pass up,” she admits, mouth snapping whiplash quick into a thin smile.  
  
“I don’t actually expect that he’ll try it—not if I explain the situation to him straightaway.”  
  
A grown woman should hardly be so adept at pursing her lips into a pout, but Frost crafts the motion, pulling all her ill-will and emotional sarcasm up into her face: she coats it with the faux-sweetness that clings to her like a second skin, and simply waits him out.  
  
“If you’re ready?” he says, meeting Ororo’s eyes and nodding. It doesn’t appear to do much to settle her, but she does retreat a few steps and take up position in one of the chairs, watching him as he moves to settle down onto his cot. Knowing her, she chose the chair near the door with careful calculation: a lifetime of self-preservation will teach a person to take the position nearest the escape route.  
  
Wouldn’t escape be truly lovely right about now? Just walk away, never tell Erik he’s going to be a father…  
  
But, ready or not, here it comes, this mad mess of responsibility and accountability for terrible decisions.  
  
Ready or _not._  
  
He has the space of a second to suck down a breath before Frost nods curtly, waving her hand in his direction and impatiently arching her brow. “At your leisure, Xavier.” Oh? Strange, how that sounds more like a command than permission.  
  
The circlet of metal wire is cool under his fingers as he touches it, one finger dipping inside where the skin of his body has heated it. Unlike the suppression device he’d worn when he’d left Westchester, this one is molded perfectly to his head, adjusted as needed: it resembles a twisting together of six pieces of chicken wire, coiled loosely around each other, looser still over his temples, though it tightens back up once it progresses back to his hairline, the wire pieces curling more closely together again. At no point does it dig down into his skin, content instead to latch into a tiny, horizontal braid in his hair that spans a few inches at the nape of his neck. Even that is covered by the layer of hair above it: a person would be hard-pressed to see where the device is attached.  
  
It takes a minute or so to unfasten the small clips at the base of the circlet and to detach the whole thing from his hair, and, by the time that’s done, a silent sort of dread has congealed in his stomach, and—what the hell is he thinking? Erik doesn’t need to know. Surely there are other alternatives.  
  
“You know he’d find out anyway, Charles.”  
  
If Frost had been the one to speak, or if Ororo had sounded any less understanding than she does right this minute, he might have simply shoved the contraption back on firmly over his skull.  
  
“I know,” he manages finally, nerves continuing to creep in along the edges of his reason. Now or never, now or never…  
  
He jerks the circlet off his head with one firm tug, tossing it aside on the bed. Even once it hits the sheets, his hands linger, biting down on the metal, clutching it like a lifeline. Lying back might be advisable for this. Yes, that’s a good idea.  
  
Sinking down onto his pillow, he sweeps his eyes over the canvas of the tent and dusts off the rust from the bond and his mind, pressing forward, down that line, shaking the pipes of it as he goes. It quivers, unused to the activity, but it comes alive quickly enough, slipping him down and in to the point where he hits the wall of Erik’s mind, precisely where they connect.  
  
At first, there’s nothing.  
  
And then, barely perceptible, a quiver against his mind. He pokes back, testing.  
  
That’s all it takes—and he shouldn’t be surprised. Erik would have hoped, because Erik, as bizarre as it is, _always_ hopes for what he wants, and nothing short of death seems to douse that flame.  
  
 _[Charles?!]_  
  
Don’t duck away. As tempting as it is, this is—it’s good, it’s warm, and Erik’s mind coaxes him, drawing him out and rubbing up against him, feeling his lines, learning him all over again, ensuring that he is who he says he is—and Erik would know. Erik understands the feel of him. _[If you try to take my mind, Frost is here, waiting to stop you. You could use my mind to overpower her, I’m sure, but not quickly enough to stop her from knocking me out first.]_  
  
 _[Charles. Are you all right? Why are you—?]_  
  
Erik is understandably surprised. They haven’t brushed minds for nine months now, not even when they met to negotiate. He hadn’t taken the circlet off, despite Erik’s obvious distaste for it and, wrapped in his hair as it was, Erik would have had to wrench it loose—and then contend with the helmeted guards who had been posted at the entrance to the meeting tent. _[I’m fine. I need to tell you something.]_  
  
 _[Whatever it is, don’t you think it would be better said in person?]_  
  
Three sentences to skip to the point of trying to nudge him into giving himself up. Erik is remarkably focused. _[No. I most certainly do not.]_  
  
 _[Come home, Charles. Give up this pointless crusade. You’ve taken back the North, but you know you can’t push your line further down. What are you planning to do? Deny this bond for the rest of your life and hide behind your military lines?]_  
  
And right to the heart of the matter. He unfolds a sigh in his mind at the thought, risking a sharp pinch at Erik’s mental presence. Sure enough, Erik’s mind jumps, and a trickle of displeasure seeps down through. _[The humans in your regions are oppressed worse than they ever were before, Erik. If anything, you’ve justified my convictions.]_  
  
 _[And I haven’t stopped the humans from going north, have I? I’ve let them all go to_ you _. I let them go to a region where the laws favor them.]_  
  
 _[How magnanimous of you.]_ The ceiling is still swimming in front of his eyes, and it’s disorienting, seeing the real world and his mindscape, feeling Erik’s presence where there’s no Erik at all. Blinking, he slides his eyes closed and anchors himself against Erik more steadily. _[In your mind, I’m sure it’s a matter of retaking the North and dealing with them once and for all, yes? They might have even made it easier for you, congregating in one place.]_  
  
Erik latches onto that with a frankly terrifying enthusiasm. _[I know I told you at the treaty meeting that I wouldn’t let the North stand, Charles. But… I’ll rescind that, all right? You come home, and I’ll leave the border where it is.]_  
  
Normally, when a person lies, his mind reeks of it, but Erik doesn’t change, doesn’t seem anything more or less than he was second before that statement. It’s too much to hope, though. Erik would never make a concession so large unless he had a way to gain back the loss. Or, perhaps he _would_ —but it’s easier to believe otherwise. Safer, really. _[I need to tell you something, Erik, but if you won’t listen to me long enough to—]_  
  
 _[I’m listening.]_ Spat out quick and desperate, with an edge of worry. Erik hardly needs to fear Charles breaking the connection right this minute, but it would appear that he’s considering such a possibility anyway.  
  
 _[I…]_  
  
 _[Yes?]_  
  
 _[I’m pregnant.]_  
  
Grabbing a hold of the edges of the bond, Charles locks himself down and waits… but his heart beats, then beats again, and Erik remains silent. He’s on the verge of repeating himself, making certain he was heard, when Erik’s shock ripples down through the bond, unsettling him, clenching up the chest of his physical body until he’s shaking. Frost’s voice echoes in the background, but he dismisses her with a quick flick of his hand in her general direction, and no one touches him, so they must have understood.  
  
 _[Come home._ Now _.]_  
  
Surely Erik can’t intend to deal with this by giving orders? He’s in no position to enforce them. And—  
  
 _[With the timing, people will think—]_  
  
 _[It had_ better _be mine, Charles. If you’ve gone off and fucked someone else_ again _… wasn’t Moira enough to teach you how that ends?]_  
  
And he sounds _vicious_. Pleased, that it ended with Moira’s death. No one should be so cruel as that, but Erik _is_ , when he gets it in his head to be. Not innately, but this—whatever this is—is a part of Erik too, tied to potentially positive things: Erik is admirably protective, possessive too, enough to make Charles feel safe until it becomes clear just how easy it is for that possessiveness to deteriorate into this cruelty toward anyone who takes what Erik values most.  
  
 _[You didn’t ask right away—]_  
  
 _[I know when the treaty meeting was, and I can do basic maths. But was I wrong to assume you haven’t been in someone else’s bed?]_  
  
 _[You’re not wrong.]_ Not that Erik has the right to dictate that. Any marriage between them was forced, and if there was no consent…  
  
No. Consent did not exist. But Erik is—is his _husband_. It happened, and the vice grip on his innards that appears when he considers disregarding that is far too tight to be overlooked. Sleeping with anyone besides Erik—gods, with whom _would_ he engage in something that inadvisable? Isn’t Erik enough trouble? Why in the world would he want _another_ lover?  
  
 _[Come home, Charles. You’re carrying my child, and it’s cruel to keep that from me, to—]_  
  
Cruel? Cruel is putting that child in a position to be used, to be turned into something that will have the kind of hate that Erik harbors. _[Don’t assume you can dictate to me about this—I won’t give you that privilege. I haven’t thought this through—I don’t know—I have no idea—]_ About anything, really _. [But I can’t give you this child, not when you’ll raise it to… hate as much as you do.]_  
  
It’s not easy. Keeping the baby away from Erik—his skin crawls at the thought, and if there were a way to have Erik, to be a family, to make this right, he’d take it. But there’s not. And what he wants—he can’t want it badly enough to sacrifice the good of their child.  
  
Neither for his own happiness nor for Erik’s.  
  
The bond darkens. Same as if someone pulled the cord on a light bulb—but Erik is there, emotion vibrating in the darkness. _[Come home, Charles. I won’t ask you again.]_  
  
Just as well that he doesn’t; the answer will be the same. _[I’m not your bloody slave, Erik: stop giving me orders]_ he snaps. _[And you’re not asking. That’s the problem with you: you never felt you should **have** to ask.]_  
  
But Erik doesn’t rise to the challenge. There’s a slight ebb and flow of emotion, but it’s gone before Charles can catch a hold of it and give it definition. _[Charles. My darling. My love. If you don’t do as I say, I will shake your world up. I will turn it inside out. I will do what it takes to have you back at my side, and you will not approve of my methods, I guarantee.]_  
  
 _[Are you threatening me?]_  
  
 _[Yes.]_  
  
Bloody hell. Grinding his fingers down into the bed, he shifts his hips, zoning in on the weight gain around his stomach and how it feels, pressing down on him. A baby. Not so big yet, at five months, but it’ll get there. And Erik is threatening him, threatening to drag him back to Genosha, baby and all.  
  
 _[You haven’t been able to force me to do anything these last months: you sure as hell aren’t going to be able to start now.]_  
  
 _[These last few months, Charles? These last few months I’ve held to morality and weighed it with my desire to have you back. I’ve avoided tactics that I knew you would find unforgiveable. But do you think that if I’m willing to do anything, regardless of what it will do to my reputation, to your conscience, to my ability to sleep at night—if I toss consideration for those things aside, do you truly think I won’t get what I want?]_  
  
The thought is sickening. But Erik, whether he recognizes it or not, will always have limits: there are things he’d never do. Hurting Charles or the baby—he wouldn’t. That’s implicit in his statement, in the promise of forcing them back: Erik can’t be willing to do _anything_ , when anything might mean he has no spouse left to bring home. Not beyond repair, then: anything Erik is willing to do, it won’t break Charles beyond repair. Repair is dreadfully subjective, but that’s a small comfort, and it’s enough to slow his breathing and allow him to turn his mind back around onto Erik.  
  
 _[You think_ you _will be the one doing the damage?]_ The damage is already done: there’s no ignoring the bump over his middle, and the constant, tormenting knowledge that he’s become what he never wanted to be. Loving the child doesn’t change that. It doesn’t stop the constant awareness of what’s happening to his body: the knowledge of that violation—there’s something growing in his body—rakes through his mind during every waking moment, and occasionally in his dreams. Loving a child doesn’t mean he wants to be pregnant with that child. This wasn’t what he grew up as. This isn’t what he thought he was going to be.  
  
 _[You try_ anything _, Erik, and I **’** ll make you wish you never came near me. I will turn _you _inside out. You stay the hell away from me, understand?]_  
  
There’s a flicker of surprise, but it vanishes quickly, replaced by a surge of anger run through with a good dose of bull-headedness. _[That’s charming, Charles, really, but you’re torn—I can feel it. Part of you wants to come home—and no wonder: pregnant bearers want their guardians, and you, no matter how brilliant you are, aren’t above biological imperatives. Besides, for someone who wants me to keep my distance, you’ve shown remarkable courtesy by telling me about the baby yourself.]_  
  
 _[Go straight to Hell. If you think love is enough to override what you’ve done… You haven’t a clue, have you, what you’ve done to me? I will_ not _return to the position you put me in after Westchester fell. Try to put me there again, and I will make you very sorry indeed.]_  
  
 _[So you said the first time. It’s less convincing to hear you say these things now: you had the opportunity to slit my throat, but here I am still breathing.]_  
  
 _[Then tip your head back_ again _, show me your throat, and we’ll see how circumstances have changed.]_  
  
Lying never was his forte, but the undiluted rage pulsing through him and thundering in his ears pushes him to it, and he digs his heels down into the bed, staring Erik down emotionally over the bond.  
  
The reverberating chuckle that echoes in his head is no less insulting, despite knowing that Erik has reason for it. _[Kill the father of your child? No. You don’t have it in you. And that’s fine. That’s the beauty of you,_ Liebling _—and no one will ever know how you work quite in the same way that I do, will they?]_ Erik nudges against the bond with his affection, nuzzling. _[You’re the kind of tenacious that wins wars, Charles, and I applaud you, both as your husband and as an opposing general. But if you won’t come home on the basis of the first of those things, then I’ll conquer you like the second, understand?]_  
  
 _[You’ll_ try _, you mean.]_  
  
There’s a moment of almost dreamy shock, undefined and drifting in between them, but Erik concentrates it quickly enough to excuse the lapse, and follows it back down into—oh, he’s chosen to select indignation. How… presumptuous of him. _[Shall I take that to mean we’ve set the board, then?]_  
  
 _[A chess metaphor is inadequate: you actually follow the rules in chess.]_  
  
 _[War_ has _no rules, Love.]_  
  
 _[Only the ones that conscience gives it.]_  
  
 _[Hmmm. Touché. I’ll so look forward to having you home again, you know: I’ve missed that wit.]_  
  
 _[Perhaps you’ll be able to notice it from across the battlefield.]_ As vicious as that sounds, one would almost think this war is a welcome thing. But Erik will know better—he wouldn’t mistake _this_. War has never been an eventuality to be desired, and that belief is one of the first things Erik learned about him.  
  
Just the same, the ache of being reminded precisely why he hates war is highly unwelcome.  
  
 _[Erik… don’t force things to come to this.]_  
  
 _[And what alternative is there, if you won’t come home?]_  
  
 _[Westchester_ is _my home **.** ]_  
  
 _[_ I _am your home.]_ But the words are smothered with pity, and, while forceful, Erik has returned to coaxing, dragging the issue down into emotional mire. _[Things were improving: we weren’t together long before you ran, but things were already settling. We would have worked out the other problems in time, and—I could feel, you know, how much you liked it when I held you, when we shared a pillow, when we spent time in the gardens—the little things. You took my shirt when you left, and my sword, and, unless I’m very much mistaken, you still have both. Why would you do those things,_ Schatz _, if you didn’t want me?]_  
  
Leave it to Erik to strike right down at the meat of the issue. He’s so good at this, at sniffing out vulnerabilities and peeling back the protective flesh until he can drive his fingers straight into the wound. It would be bad enough if he did it cruelly, but to approach it like this, painting the whole thing as an emotion-driven entreaty, is almost insurmountably crippling. That’s the worst of it too: it _is_ an emotion-driven entreaty. Erik means every word he’s saying.  
  
This conversation has to end. It’s too close to questions Charles hasn’t answered for himself, and if Erik gets a hold of those uncertainties and drags them out into the light, there will be no maintaining the viciousness that’s worked so well against Erik up until this point.  
  
 _[You don’t have the first clue, Erik. I—you think I don’t—of_ course _I want you, and I hate—I hate rather a lot of things for that. So back off, and we can figure something out, maybe weekends each month in a neutral location, or—]_  
  
 _[Charles.]_  
  
He stops, and, out of reflex, one hand jumps to his temple, kneading at the skin.  
  
 _[I won’t settle for that. You’re what means the most to me in this world, and the idea of living like I did in the years after killing Shaw… missing you, craving you, worrying for you constantly—the bond drives me_ mad _—and then to add in a child whom I would so seldom get to see? No. I won’t live like that, Charles, and I won’t let_ you _live like that, denying something that’s part of yourself. You must be hurting, being pregnant, and being away—my scent would help, and you’d feel better, just from proximity. I know it’s hard for you, having been raised to hide that part of who you are, but by denying it you’re hurting_ yourself _. You were meant for a time before the storms, Love, when you could have done as you pleased—but the fact remains that ours is a world where, when the bond sparked, you became_ mine _, both through societal perception and through nature. Maybe you could fight me and win, but you can’t fight the whole world: it’s time to stop trying. Come home.]_  
  
No.  
  
But Erik is right. The world won’t accept him. The world sees what his body is capable of, and it slots him into a space accordingly. If the population were more stable, there would be hope—some chance—  
  
There’s _still_ a chance, desperate as the North is to keep Erik out.  
  
But it isn’t a _good_ chance.  
  
If Erik is right—if he is _right—_  
  
Slamming his shields back into place, he cuts the connection and snatches up the circlet, jamming it onto his head. The shock slices down through him, tearing apart whatever it is that settled back in him at hearing Erik. It had only been minutes, but this emptiness—it’s agony. Erik is gone, all over again, and Charles’ head aches: everything aches, throbbing, and one particularly bad pulse pulls a cry out of him—honest pain, but it’s good, it’s stabilizing—tearing what feels like a good chunk of his chest away with him.   
  
“Gods,” he whispers, just as Ororo’s hand flutters to the edge of his elbow, patting first, and then tightening, holding him steady. If he were to look away from those slim, elegant hands and up to her face, no doubt he’d find concern, even care, but to have those things served up to him rankles, when he could have them so easily elsewhere. The dullness of having them from Ororo….  
  
What a mess. A dangerous, deadly mess, that’s twisted him to the point of exhaustion and induced him into thinking of things in those terms.  
  
“Are you all right?”  
  
Bit of a throwaway question, when she’s already begun brushing his hair back, separating the clumps with her fingers. That can’t be pleasant, when it’s sweat that’s sticking the strands together.  
  
“I think,” he says slowly, testing the words out on his tongue, “that I don’t have much of a choice.”  
  
That’s nothing less than the truth.  
  
Looking upward, he meets Ororo’s eyes. “Whether or not I’m ready, there’s no turning back now.”  
  
And slowly, solemnly—with the eyes of someone who _knows_ —she nods.  
  
Really, it _is_ that simple. So complicated, but so simple all the same.  
  
\-----------------------------  
  
Erik has made a number of promises over the course of their acquaintance. It’s ironic, when Erik isn’t particularly given to frivolously promising what he can’t give, and those things that he can—they’ve always been gift-wrapped in bitterness. Before, it was the hurt of knowing that what Erik was offering—friendship, a like mind, a chance not to be alone—could never go beyond the platonic. Later, it was the agony of reality, of being trapped, and always flavoring their relationship with a hint of hate.  
  
When Erik promised that this would end with Charles back by his side, there was never any doubt that Erik meant it. There was never anything by the steeliness of knowing it was himself verses Erik, will against will, and that rules would change, and one of them would have to bend for the other. This was never going to be a fair fight.  
  
Fair or not, to wake with a body hovering beside his bed—the shock plunges Charles down into a place of desperation—into a place where this was never supposed to go. Erik wouldn’t—he’d never endanger his unborn child, nor Charles, which means this is…  
  
This is either not Erik’s doing, or this man is here to abduct, rather than to kill. Too bloody bad for the poor sod either way.  
  
Five months pregnant doesn’t mean a thing when his children’s safety is at risk. His fingers snatch into the space under his pillow, casting for a grip, for—there, the coldness of metal, and one good grasp—  
  
His attacker reads his motion and feints backward right at the last minute, avoiding the swipe of Charles’ knife by mere inches. The noise of displaced air whistles, sharp and threatening in the tent, worse when Charles goes at him a second time, swiping the knife downward and nicking the man’s shoulder, forcing the man to drop back away from him, groping along the side of the tent with one hand for balance.  
  
All the same, sudden advantage or not, only a fool would put his pride over safety. David is awake and sitting up on the cot, where he was curled against Charles’ side until he was woken seconds ago by Charles’ hasty departure. With David this near to the fight, there isn’t the luxury of making a point by dispatching this man himself. “Help!” he bellows, kicking out at the person. His—oh, but— _her_. Her face is hidden by shadows, but it’s obviously a feminine build.  
  
What’s the meaning? Why send a bearer or a sterile? Why would Erik—if this _is_ Erik’s doing….  
  
Time for that later. For now: Charles’ kick follows through, slamming into the woman’s chest and knocking her backward. She totters, scrambling to get her feet back under herself properly, but a quick duck down low, swiping out, steals her feet from beneath her—and she topples, thumping to the ground in a heap, easy enough to pin: knees on either side of her chest and on top of both her wrists. Very convenient: that leaves his hands free to press a blade to the woman’s throat, precisely as a commotion from outside bursts into the tent. And bless them, they’ve brought a lantern.  
  
Not that it matters. As shocked as Alex and Armando look, it must not do much in terms of identifying the attacker.  
  
In a perfect world, this would be the first time he’s ever faced an assassination attempt. In a perfect world, he’d be able to definitively say this _is_ an assassination attempt. But, if anyone thinks this is a perfect world, he must be round about the stage of life where he hasn’t yet left his bearer’s womb.  
  
This world is a mess, and after the first memorable attempt on his life when he was ten—reportedly there was one when he was a baby, but he can’t recall—he’s had enough practice to be getting on with, and plenty of examples to use as comparison. Assassins don’t refrain from trying to hit him; their hands aren’t empty of weapons; and if he’s ever met one that seems to physically shrink away from his stomach, he can’t bring the instance to mind.  
  
“Who the hell are you?” Alex spits out, grabbing the woman by her coat and hauling her up—a better angle from which to toss her down onto the cot once Charles has plucked David off it, wrapping him up in his arms and breathing in the baby scent from his hair. David, who’s mostly asleep, puffs out a sleepy breath, buries his face into his father’s neck, and drifts off again, oblivious to the danger around him.  
  
Whoever she is, the assassin is unquestionably a mutant. Under other circumstances, that would be delightful: her mutation is obviously of the variety that would allow her to enter undetected into a heavily guarded tent. Teleporter?  
  
“Who are you?” Alex demands again, rattling the woman against the cot. Armando blinks, hand twitching, but he apparently thinks better of interfering and instead remains where he is.  
  
“Blink.“  
  
“Not your code. Your _name_!”  
  
“Clarice Ferguson.”  
  
Not a familiar name. Erik has never mentioned her, and she wasn’t a part of the Shaw campaign, unless she’d served in a minor capacity. It’s possible, but… it doesn’t set quite right.  
  
The woman levels herself up onto the cot, staring up at them with calm, bright green eyes. And—are those pink markings? It’s difficult to tell in the dim light, and he moves over to the table where there’s another lamp waiting. A quick flick of the match lights it, and, after extinguishing the match, he lifts the lamp and brings it to the center of the tent, hanging it from a hook on the central pole. The light still isn’t _good,_ but it’s better like this.  
  
Yes, those _are_ pink markings. Quite striking, actually. Whoever she is, she’s a beautiful woman, and, from the looks of it, not one to be cowed. Though, nor one who runs on aggression. Now that the fight is over, none of it is left on her face: her brow has smoothed out, and she sits calmly, one hand clutching at the knife wound, and the other hand in her lap, as she tracks their motions with her eyes.  
  
“Alex,” he calls, matching her really quite admirable level of calm.  
  
Alex jerks his head up, and while his chest is heaving, he’s controlled enough to back off when Charles tips his head to the side, nodding a request for space. Alex’s self-control has improved by leaps and bounds from the Shaw campaign, thank the gods. Armando has helped greatly with that, offering a stabilizing influence that’s helped to calm him.  
  
“If you would,” he says pleasantly, unpeeling his hold from around David and glancing pointedly down at his son. Alex takes the hint and reaches out, collecting David carefully up against his own chest and securing his hold, well enough that—it isn’t easy to let David go, exactly, but the difficultly doesn’t come in worrying that Alex will drop him. It isn’t Alex at all: of all the people he would trust with his son, Alex is at the top of that list.  
  
“Thank you,” he adds, once his son is out of his arms. Alex, despite his gruff attitude and propensity for occasional lip, is remarkably paternalistic. All those years spent caring for Scott, it’s no surprise, but watching Alex accommodate to a child never grows any less wonderful. He doesn’t change—doesn’t soften, but more… opens up, revealing the best of himself.  
  
“Now, then.” Hands freed, he plucks the knife up off the edge of the cot—already out of the woman’s reach, naturally—where he’d dropped it when snatching up David, and sheathes it noisily. The woman hardly moves, eyes firmly upward, meeting the gazes of her current detainers. “Should I assume Erik sent you?”  
  
The woman—Ferguson, she’d said—nods. Though Armando has stepped forward to forestall any attempts to leave the cot, she’s showing no signs of wishing to make such a movement. Good. That will make things easier. More importantly, it says a good deal about her motives: she clearly isn’t here to harm, so the logical conclusion is that she was meant to extract him. Teleportation is looking increasingly likely by the second. Although, it must be the kind that requires some extra effort: not like Azazel, who can simply vanish.  
  
“Yes,” she admits slowly, and—damn it, but it’s difficult not to like her. There’s no excessive violence in her manner, and she’s stalwart in the face of capture. Not surly, but accepting, and with fortitude enough to see her through both a kidnapping attempt—assassination can be ruled out at this point—and her own detainment. That’s impressive.  
  
He tips his head, arching back over his shoulder far enough to catch Alex’s eye. “Get Frost in here.”  
  
As unenjoyable as is the prospect of involving her in this, Frost will need to scan her. The woman—Ferguson—has no visible reason to lie at this point, but that view only holds true in light of the information that they have. If there’s more to this situation than is immediately apparent, Frost needs to find it.  
  
Pity that means trusting Frost: it’s a poor day when he must rely on someone who would no doubt lie to him if it were for her own benefit.  
  
About all that can be done, though, is to hope that, for now, their goals align.  
  
“Yes, Sir,” Alex agrees, and while his mouth is too tense to suggest that he’s pleased, he marches out of the tent without another word, David still against his chest. Safest place for him, really—away from whatever just happened here—though it grates terribly to have his son out of his sight.  
  
Better than in the sight of a potential kidnapper, though.  
  
“Now, then,” he says, catching Armando’s eye and giving him a quick nod—guard the door, it says—before squatting down in front of the woman as Armando takes up his post, preparing to watch the conversation silently. He’s used to this sort of interrogation by now—he saw it enough in the war against Shaw. “I’d prefer to keep this as pleasant as possible.”  
  
She offers him a quick, curt nod. “I wasn’t sent to harm you, Sir.”  
  
“No.” That’s worth sighing over, because, really, an assassination attempt might have been more welcome. “I expect you weren’t. I’ll need to know your exact orders, please.”  
  
That isn’t a joke, but she huffs, almost chuckling, and her cheeks—already full and colored like porcelain—dimple under the pressure of a slight smile. “To be honest, I’m not sure he thought I’d succeed. Hoped, but…” She shakes her head. “He told me that, if I were caught, I shouldn’t bother lying about what I’d been sent to do.”  
  
“Which was?”  
  
She shrugs. “I have the ability to open portals—and to bring things through with me. When you woke, I was trying to get a look at you, to make sure you were the person I was sent to retrieve. If you’d stayed asleep a few seconds longer, I would have opened a portal in the floor and rolled you off the cot and down into it.”  
  
It isn’t cold enough to blame the weather for the shiver that runs down through his spine. She’d been _very_ close to succeeding. “And I’ll suppose that the reason you didn’t open one during our scuffle was because—“  
  
“I was busy dodging you and the knife, yes.”  
  
“And David?”  
  
“I would have come back for him after teleporting you.”  
  
“And should I assume you aren’t a bearer?”  
  
“No. Sterile.”  
  
“And why are you’re serving a leader who would see people like you relegated to a second tier?”  
  
Her smile disintegrates, weighted down on both sides and wrung out into a melancholy frown. “Because I believe you’ll lose. I won’t throw my lot in with someone who I think won’t win. And that means finding work in the unified regions. That’s not easy, and I’m not picky about my jobs, Sir: this pays far better than most of the other work I could get.”  
  
Essentially, then, Erik exploited a young woman’s economic need in order to cultivate her talent for his own benefit. It makes sense: the military always offers the best benefits for the use of mutations that are applicable to warfare. She’d get a better deal from serving in the army than she would anywhere else. Erik probably wasn’t even involved in her recruiting: this is a system that goes from the ground up, and by the time she came to Erik’s attention, she would already have been in deep.  
  
That doesn’t make it any better. If anything, it makes it worse.  
  
“Did he order you to tell me that?”  
  
For the first time, she shows some sort of surprise: “I wouldn’t think you’d need to be told: it’s common knowledge that people like me often end up working for the military.”  
  
No, then, not an order. But Erik must not have forbidden her from telling, either. Chances are, he didn’t think of it. Why would he? That knowledge would be familiar to the point of being ingrained as normal in his mind. That, and he must not have guessed that there would be much discussion of her motives, beyond what orders she’d have.  
  
Erik should know better. This isn’t the first time a questioning session has ended in a conversation about motives. Once, Erik joked that it was an interrogation technique: people would confess in hopes of stopping the lectures on morality.  
  
Forgetting is easy, though, when it’s an avenue you’d never explore yourself—and Erik would never be one to lecture his prisoners on the morality of their decisions.  
  
“Did he tell you why he wanted you to bring me back?”  
  
She shrugs. “It’s not my business.”  
  
“I’m pregnant.”  
  
This is the last thing he should be confessing to her. But, it does the trick: the only actual indication of her surprise is how her breath hitches, catching her shoulders in an upward suspense. She recovers quickly enough to hide the movement from less practiced eyes, but, in this case, the evidence is already there. Excellent. She knows what a pregnancy means for a bearer in his position.  
  
“That child is Erik’s heir. You tell me that you took this job because it was the best way you could take care of yourself: and _I_ am telling you that if you had succeeded in what you came to do, I would no longer _have_ the opportunity to take care of myself. That baby and I would have had our every move controlled. And you supported that.”  
  
Give credit where it’s due: she meets his eyes, rather than ducking away as many people in her situation would do. “It isn’t like that, you know, for everyday people. Bearers work outside the home. My mother—we would have starved if she hadn’t. Most people would starve if both parents didn’t work.”  
  
“She came and went as she pleased, then?”  
  
She nods. “More or less. Papa was in charge, but he listened to her, and he never told her where to go or when to be home—“  
  
“And if you think it’s like that for everyone, you’re fooling yourself.”  
  
“Not for royalty—“  
  
“Not for _anyone_. There are plenty of books left from before the storms: Shaw didn’t get them all. People _know_ what things are like. But they play by Shaw’s rules— _Erik’s_ rules—because it’s easier. But someday, once they’ve finished pushing down humans, mutants will fracture amongst themselves: guardians will turn more of their efforts toward pushing down steriles. You’ll end up as the cogs of society, working while guardians rule and bearers have children. And there _still_ won’t be enough food. The population will be unsteady, and nothing will improve. You think things will get better just by throwing in your lot with the side who’s only merit is that _they won’t lose_?”  
  
Her hand clenches against the knife wound. It’s stained red by now, though it isn’t particularly worrying: Alex will be back any second with Frost, and after that he can send for a medic. If things become particularly dire, Armando is at the door, although it would be a risky move, staying alone with a teleporter—and not a risk he’s keen to take unless she actually falls unconscious.  
  
“Half the population is always hungry, Sir,” she admits, not bothering to mask her guilt. This is always the worst: when someone knows she’s wrong, but commits the action anyway for reasons that can’t be thoroughly dismissed. She’s desperate to make a living, and he can’t blame her for trying to survive. Erik is currently her best option, if she doesn’t consider the long game. “I don’t want to be in that half.”  
  
In that case, being a prisoner will suit her well: Westchester’s prisoners are fed as adequately as possible with the supplies they have—and it’s a damn sight better than most free men.  
  
“There are worse things than being hungry, Miss Ferguson.”  
  
She huffs, twitching her cheek impatiently. “ _You_ have never had to fight for your meals.”  
  
“Maybe not. But I’ve had to fight for everything else. Or do you think Westchester was willing to follow a bearer? I’m here leading an army because I proved I _could_. Believe me, I know what fighting is, and maybe I haven’t learned that from being hungry, but I _do_ know what it is to go without. No, I’ve never been starving, but _you_ have never been a bearer. And I can tell you, it’s worth fighting for something better.”  
  
Though she doesn’t concede, there’s a hint of interest: she turns her body further toward him, tuning in to his words, if not to his argument. “Half your troops are human. They’d see us oppressed every bit as quickly as you claim the guardians have done. How is that better?”  
  
Erik has done quite a spectacular job on her. It’s one thing, having someone obey orders, but it’s another to make her _believe_ in what she’s doing. If actual indoctrination can be accomplished, warfare becomes personal—and people fight hardest for what’s personal.  
  
“You say that… and yet, when we drove your troops back past Westchester’s border, some of the people most responsible for that were _human_. Why? Because Erik _underestimates_ humans. He underestimates everyone whom he thinks is beneath him. He underestimates _you_. In that last battle that pushed your troops back to where they are now, the only reason Erik believed our soldiers were breaking line and fleeing was because I arranged for a human-heavy division of my forces to do so. Erik was ready to see the worst in them. And so I let him see it—at his own expense. Those humans were some of the bravest soldiers in that battle, drawing Erik’s troops in like that while their brothers-in-arms closed in around behind Erik’s advancing force. We pinched Erik’s forces— _your_ forces—and surrounded them, because those _humans_ played their parts perfectly. It’s because of those _humans_ that we—the North—won.”  
  
As broken as this girl is, her fortitude is fascinating: she doesn’t fidget, but continues meeting his eye, firm and with a stiff upper lip. And that stare—it’s those eyes, piercing, not necessarily like she knows all his secrets, but like she _could_ know them, if she wanted to bother. It’s more terrifying that she doesn’t _want_ to know, when one stops to think about why that is. “You lost the first time he invaded Westchester,” she points out. “If you’re so skillful, why was _that_?”  
  
If she meant that as an insult, she fails in delivering it, tapering off at the end of the sentence into a mild tone. Her manner is no more threatening than her voice: she leans in closer, eyes wide and mouth a bit slack, far from the expression of someone trying to be insulting, but rather a lot closer to the face of a person digging for actual _answers_. Imagine that: someone wanting the truth instead of a pretty lie. It’s disturbing, though, that she has to ask in the first place: Erik’s first invasion is common knowledge, but the sheer amount of ulterior motives surrounding it have smothered much of its details in secrecy.  
  
“A combination of things.” He doesn’t owe her answers, but it’s been ages since anyone has bothered to ask about the first invasion. Truthfully, it’s probably been since the invasion itself—since before he was exposed as a bearer. After that, everyone thought a working womb—apparently correlated to non-functional military ability—was all the answer they needed. “When Erik first began to amass power, I didn’t think he’d follow through with the invasion. He had enough to be getting on with, just with the South. Honestly, a failure to clean up that mess is what is destabilizing him now: if, instead of pushing northward, he’d taken time to stabilize the southern areas under his control, he might have been able to gut out the old remnants of Shaw’s regime and better establish his own infrastructure. As it stands now, though, the South is volatile. I’m sure you know this: the riots are common knowledge.”  
  
She nods in acknowledgement, tucking one ankle under the other. It’s not quite a nervous fidget, but close, poised on the brink between eager and uncomfortable. “Yes. Two men were hanged yesterday.”  
  
No doubt. Erik’s way of dealing with dissenters is to eliminate them, not realizing that, in this case, it may only make the old families dig their heels in deeper. “There’s a lot of old nobility in the South,” he murmurs, nodding along with her. “People who lost a lot when Shaw was overthrown. They’d love to see Erik lose control—and they’re not above stirring up trouble. Erik should have taken the time to deal with them before he tried to expand his kingdom, and, because he hasn’t, he’s faced with a powerbase in the South that’s essentially requiring him to fight a war on two fronts. The first time around, that wasn’t the case. The South was still reeling from Shaw’s removal, and the regions were so pleased that Erik wasn’t Shaw that they were willing to back him in his invasions.”  
  
Ferguson digs her fingers into the end of her braid, staring down at it and turning it, tilting it for further inspection. She probably couldn’t describe what she’s seeing under any circumstances: it’s a blatant excuse to look away, and nothing more. “He still has backing,” she says slowly, trying the words out, though the look on her face suggests she finds them wanting.  
  
“Yes. But it’s peppered with dissent now. Erik has to put down the trouble in the South while also fighting us in the North. And it isn’t just that: the first time, he had infiltrated Boston and had the benefit of being able to choke us on both sides.”  
  
What this girl knows of the events that transpired in Boston is uncertain at best. Intelligence says that Erik has largely suppressed all talk of what happened there, but people talk, and there’s no telling what might have made its way through the grapevine. All the same, starting at the beginning is easiest.  
  
“Boston didn’t much like his rule. The North is very used to doing what it likes, and being ruled from Genosha didn’t turn out to be especially popular. As it happened, I didn’t need to find a way to remove Erik’s men from Boston: Boston rebelled against his officials all on its own. Though, as I understand it, that isn’t common knowledge—and I can’t say that I blame Erik for sweeping it under the rug. I imagine it would be very bad for publicity if the rest of the regions understood that, in the wake of Erik Lehnsherr’s bearer getting the better of him and escaping to join the resistance, Boston got it in their heads that if he wasn’t able to contain his bearer, he sure as hell couldn’t restrain an entire region—and they were right. He couldn’t. Boston rose up, and because the Upper North was decimated, after Boston turned against him, Erik had no hold above Westchester. With rebels there as well, the supply lines were cut—” Or, more specifically, he and a very willing band of rebels had kept harassing the lines until it became impractical to keep trying to send through supplies, “—and the continuance of a campaign against Boston became impractical.”  
  
Dropping her braid to hang limply against her chest, she ducks her chin down and stares away off toward the opposite wall. “No,” she murmurs, voice deadened and heavy. “That wasn’t public knowledge. We knew Boston had fallen, but it wasn’t attributed to the rebels. There was an execution—General Lehnsherr’s appointed official. It was said that he’d cut a deal with the rebels, and that Boston wouldn’t have fallen otherwise.”  
  
Lies upon lies upon lies. It isn’t especially like Erik to tell untruths so baldly, but perhaps honesty doesn’t extend to his methods of statecraft. And, at this point, Erik must be doing anything he can to keep things stable. Lying may seem the least of all evils.  
  
Truthfully, there has been _so much_ evil. This is a story that never seems to end. And—this girl deserves to hear the end of it, now that she’s been subjected to the beginning.  
  
“From there,” he continues, “I made a deal with Boston and what was left of the Upper North: bearer I may be, but no one knows Erik better than I do. No one has a better chance of beating him. They recognized that, and they were willing to combine forces to form an army. From there…” A bitter smile curdles his expression; it’s as sour as spoiled milk, and it tastes just as bad on his lips. “I may have lost Westchester once before, but, in my case, it was far easier to retake the city than it was to defend it. A knowledge of hidden passageways does very little to defend against an invasion: it’s excellent for evacuation, but it’s rather useless in a military sense. When invading, though? It’s invaluable. It was rather simple, surrounding Westchester and then sending another force of soldiers down through those tunnels. Erik’s men at Westchester found themselves assaulted both from within the city and from without. Again, Erik failed to be thorough: he ought to have had the palace scoured for hidden passages right from the onset. I suspect, though—“ And here the smile turns absolutely poisonous. It’s horrid, feeling it, wearing it, knowing that he must look terribly bitter, but reality can’t be so easily suppressed these days. “I suspect my husband had other things on his mind.” Things of a more _conjugal_ nature. His arrival had, after all, coincided with the culmination of his ultimate goal. Regaining his bonded must have been far more alluring than the prospect of considering a building’s structure.  
  
“You make it sound as though General Lehnsherr is incompetent,” Ferguson says, watching him carefully.  
  
Is she hoping that he’ll incriminate himself? In her world, replying in the affirmative is treason. Erik’s methods of indoctrination surely are effective if she’s unconsciously expecting her worldview to encompass an area where Erik’s hold no longer touches.  
  
“Erik is better at combat itself—in the physical act of fighting. Planning was never his forte.”  
  
She blinks her eyes, and the motion tugs at the markings on her face, dancing them in the lamplight. “If it hadn’t been _you_ , it wouldn’t have mattered that he hadn’t found those passages.”  
  
Loyal to the last, isn’t she? Erik chose his would-be abductor well, and it’s possible that he foresaw this conversation and sent someone who would ask all the questions that would force this exchange to be especially gutting. Erik is by no means above using memories as a weapon. “True. And if it hadn’t been _Erik_ , I wouldn’t have been fighting in the first place. At this juncture, I’ll use what I have, including _myself_. I’ll be the bait, if that’s what is necessary. And, in this case, ‘necessary’ meant holding a treaty meeting with Erik while my soldiers were filing through the tunnels under Westchester, preparing for an attack. Best-case scenario: Erik would agree to my terms, and I would never have to give the order for an attack. Unfortunately, that isn’t what happened.”  
  
“There was a treaty meeting?” she asks, tilting her head speculatively.  
  
It’s gratifying, seeing how neatly Erik has hung himself. Shrouding that treaty meeting in secrecy was necessary for Erik at the time, but the result of that secrecy is obvious: no one knows that the two of them ever had more than indirect contact. And, if no one knows, then Erik will have quite a challenge explaining how his bearer’s child is his heir. He’ll either be forced to admit to having covered up the meeting, or to the possibility that he’s been cuckolded. Either way, it won’t do much for his public image.  
  
“Yes. The day before my troops retook Westchester. It was my last attempt to regain Westchester peacefully, but Erik refused to concede to any of my demands.”  
  
“You shouldn’t have been fighting him in the first place.”  
  
And this is really what it comes down to, isn’t it? He’s laid all of the right arguments before her, but she’s run her mind in a circle and ended up directly back where she began: at his gender.  
  
It had been worth a try, this act of reasoning with her. She would have been an excellent asset, if he could have convinced her. But, at this point, any further attempt would be the equivalent of banging his head against the wall—and, yes, in the past few months, that’s been a temptation to do that, specifically around the time that morning sickness kicked in. Giving into the desire now would be pathetic after having refrained up to this point.  
  
“You’ll be escorted to a secure location,” he tells her with a sigh, pushing up back into a standing position as he rolls the words out. “Miss Frost will scan you, but I don’t expect it will reveal anything more than what you’ve already told me.”  
  
Apparently accepting the dissolution of the conversation, she nods, jostling her long, pink-black braid over her shoulder. It tumbles down her front. Pretty hair. Pretty girl. Smart, capable—she could be brilliant, if only she could think beyond today.  
  
But that’s the victory of Shaw’s system: it panics people, and they turn to their day-to-day lives, worried about their next meal, and concentrated on the immediate problems of living. They don’t worry about others. If they aren’t a bearer, then bearers don’t matter; if they aren’t human, then humans don’t matter. If another person isn’t _you_ or your family, he doesn’t matter in anything more than the abstract. Others exist, and they’re valuable because they keep humanity going, but, beyond that, people are isolated into the mindset of their own social groups. Cooperation on the level it would take to change things is terribly hard to come by: it takes an issue such as Shaw himself, who was a threat to all groups, to achieve that level of unity.  
  
Erik is not quite the same level of threat, and it shows in the lack of those who are willing to fight him.  
  
“I wish you the best of luck,” he tells her honestly, taking a step back—and good timing too: Alex, Frost, and a soldier named Levine—a friend of Moira’s, and even now, years later, he’s a bit of a painful reminder—duck through the tent flap, Alex with concern, Levine with a studied evenness, and Frost with a sharp, assessing eye. “Truly, I do.”  
  
Luck, yes, and what a useless thing that is, wishing luck. Frost would surely agree, pragmatic as she is. Already, she’s sizing up their prisoner, watching her with a shrewd eye as she stands there, head held high. Frost may not be an admirable woman, but she takes pride in what she does: she goes at things with her eyes wide open, to rise and fall based on her own merits and her own responsibility. The woman seated on the cot before them cannot say the same.  
  
And it’s tragic, because she could be more— _so much_ more. She could be brave and good, and in a different world she might have turned into someone who would fight on the side of what was right, regardless of whether or not that side would lose.  
  
But not this world.  
  
In this world, it’s safe to say that no one is what he or she was meant to be. Himself most of all, probably.  
  
In another world, maybe he wouldn’t have had to be the kind of man who turns to Frost and says, “All yours” before stepping aside and heading for the exit of the tent. He’ll go collect his son, who Alex will have left with Jean. Erik won’t try again tonight, and, if he does, then Armando will be there, and Sean too, while Alex is busy aiding Emma.  
  
In this world, he can’t save everyone.  
  
In _this_ world, he isn’t even allowed to try.


	33. Chapter 33

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry the updates have been a bit slow lately. In about three weeks I'll have a little more time, but, until then, I have very limited time online. I'll also get around to answering comments too, once I have a spare moment. I really do appreciate all the feedback!

Two weeks later, it becomes appallingly clear that Erik’s threats of imminent warfare were not made in jest. There was never any real reasons to believe that they were, but there’s a terrifying gravity to suddenly having the soldiers at his border arming themselves and preparing to press forward.  
  
It’s a horrible tactical move for Erik, when everything is taken into account. Erik can’t win that kind of offensive: Westchester has the superior defenses, and unless Erik were to pulls troops from further South where they’re still needed, he doesn’t have the manpower to win this.  
  
Drawing more troops from the South is—not impossible, but ridiculous. If he were to lower the numbers of peacekeeping troops present in the South, rebellion would almost certainly erupt: human-mutant tensions are already simmering, and with the powerful Southern families threatening a possible mess, Erik would be setting himself up for an explosion. He’d destabilize himself in the South, to take the North? Not even in desperation to drag Charles back would he be so foolish, surely.  
  
No, this time around, practically speaking he _can’t_ sledgehammer his way up through the regions with sheer overwhelming numbers.  
  
And, yet, here Erik is, mobilizing the troops that he does have, and preparing to march on a campaign he has no real way of winning.  
  
For most, that would be a comfort—a sign that Erik has finally gone mad and made a momentous mistake.  
  
What a treat that would be, to have the opportunity to take Erik’s complications at face value. But this is _Erik_ , and what might seem to be cause for confidence is instead reason to sit back and spread out the maps, to send out spies, to have Frost riffle through the captured enemy soldiers’ minds again and again until she snaps at him that if the soldiers were unaware of Erik’s plans the first five times, they’re going to be unaware the sixth.  
  
More imminently than any of that, it’s a reason to finally, _finally_ take seriously the intentions that Scott Summers has toward David’s nanny, Jean.  
  
It’s simply a stroke of luck—and he’s owed some, considering—that Jean and Scott have made things especially easy for him, in asking after approval. Technically, as a part of his household, Jean needs his permission to marry. It’s mostly pointless: if they wished to override him, they’d only need to imprint and he’d be faced with the option of either ordering Scott’s death or acquiescing to the match.  
  
Considering that, it’s good of them to ask outright.  
  
“I’m sure you know I wouldn’t turn you down,” he admits, running his gaze over the link they’ve made of their hands. Scott’s palm is big enough to swallow Jean’s hand, though her fingers peak out and curl around his, like a child playing amongst the reeds.  
  
Scott will treat her well. He’s quieter than Alex, far more even-tempered, and the stability of his convictions will make him an anchor for Jean, who has yet to grasp the gravity of the power she holds locked away within herself. Better that she doesn’t: that kind of power owns a person, rather than the other way around.  
  
Owned, yes: gods forbid anyone ever owns Jean. Even with her powers muted, she possesses a quiet strength that exceeds most people’s understanding. And she’s kind—gentle in the right ways. Scott—there’s every indication that he sees that in her, and, by all appearances, he appreciates it. That doesn’t blot out the unmistakable conviction that, as a guardian, he’s meant to protect her—but he watches her as though _she_ owns _his_ world. The balance of power may be uneven, but…  
  
It’s the best that can be hoped for at present.  
  
Scott will treat her well, and she’ll have a say, as close to equal as she can get, with society resting its marriages on an uneven scale.  
  
“And, I have to admit, your timing is good.”  
  
Jean blinks, and while she won’t meet his eye directly, she does glance down to his arms where he’s holding David. His son is sleeping, mouth lolling open, with a thin trail of drool sneaking down out of his mouth and threatening to desecrate the last clean uniform left in Charles’ wardrobe. He’d best make time to do laundry: too much more of a wait, and he won’t have the chance.  
  
Placing David down on the floor, he allows his son to happily totter off in search of better entertainment than his father’s dreary statecraft.  
  
“My Lord?” Scott asks, tilting his head, clearly confused but doing his best not to show it. Pity: he’s failing rather miserably. A career in covert affairs is essentially out of the question for him.  
  
“I need you two to take my son and go north. Now, before the fighting begins. Don’t tell me where you’re going: but, a month from now, I want you to find a way to verbally convey the information, and to tell me where you are. If it would be best for the information to remain hidden, I will stop whoever is delivering the message. In that case, you are to try again at a later date. Keep this up until I accept communication.”  
  
Clearly, this was not what either of them expected. Scott was likely prepared to fight in the upcoming confrontation, and Jean might have been too, though there’s the possibility that she’d have hung back. It isn’t so much that Jean doesn’t have the streak of violence necessary for a battle—it’s the sense that, if she opened that up to the world, it might be difficult to rein back in afterward.  
  
“I’m pregnant,” he admits without preamble. “If I’m captured, Erik is guaranteed to have access to at least one of my children: I won’t allow him power over the other as well—not if I can help it. And I can. Take David, and go north.”  
  
Jean, bless her, understands. Her lips are too tight, her face drawn, and the shadows under her eyes are too ever-present for her to be utterly innocent of his motivations. She may love Scott, but she understands.  
  
Scott, unlike Jean, baldly wears his uncertainty. “I—Sir, are you certain?” he asks, reaching up to scratch at his head, flicking one finger nervously against the tip of his ear. “We—I’m not sure we’re the best suited—“  
  
“You are. Jean is already David’s nanny. And I trust the two of you. You’re clever. You’re powerful. I trust you. I can’t do better.” That doesn’t mean they’re perfect, but they’re better than allowing David to stay. “If you have no other objections than your own competence, I would ask that you take tonight to prepare and then leave in the morning.”  
  
In terms of stunning Scott, no physical blow could have been more effective. The light catches on his glasses just so, and for a moment it appears that he’s blinking. That’s projection, naturally—though, it’s startled enough to justify assigning gobsmacked gestures to him. “No other objections, Sir. I—if Jean agrees, then we’ll do as you say. Of course we will.” He looks over at her, and though she can’t see his eyes either, she can quite easily peek inside his mind. Whatever she encounters seals the deal, and she offers him a quick nod and a small, contained smile. “Yes, Sir,” Scott says, turning back to face front. “We’ll leave in the morning.”  
  
“Thank you. I wouldn’t want to keep you, then, but do send Dr. McCoy in when you leave? I need a word with him. Oh, and if you would… refrain from enlightening any others as to the content of this conversation. Not what you’re doing, not where you’re going, and certainly not that I’m… expecting.”  
  
If many others know he’s pregnant, it could be disastrous. Just imagining the number of people who would try to use him as leverage in ways they wouldn’t have been able to before—it’s terrifying. There are so many possibilities: take him captive, and in a few more months, they’ll have two hostages; rip his baby out and send the corpse to Erik; deliver them both back to Erik in hopes of currying good favor; or even—even what? Better not to ask.  
  
As soon as this next battle is over, he’ll have to let people know. Too soon, it’s going to become undeniable anyway. But for the next little while, it needs to remain unknown.  
  
Jean scuffs her foot against the ground, leaning into Scott’s side, but her mild frown and the way she avoids his eyes is enough of a tell. Better still, it means she’ll do as he asks.  
  
“Send Dr. McCoy in,” he says again, more gently this time. “I’ll speak to you again in the morning. And, in the meantime: Jean… you probably ought to send word off to your family.”  
  
Back before Erik had taken Westchester, Jean had mentioned that she has a mother, and while she’s never offered details, when she’d confessed to the woman’s existence, she’d gained a wistful, though guarded expression that hadn’t been possible to decipher without using his telepathy to pry deeper. Stories don’t unfold from expression alone—not like they do from the mind—and when she hadn’t shared, it had felt presumptuous to push.  
  
This instance is not the same: Jean’s features scrunch up, and she freezes, caught under the weight of what was only meant to be a simple suggestion. And Scott—he startles too, but it’s on account of Jean’s sudden, strange behavior.  
  
“Jean?” he asks slowly, nudging her worriedly with his elbow and dipping his head down toward her.  
  
Jean doesn’t look at him. Currently, she’s in danger of boring a hole in the wall with her stare—hopefully not literally—and the unchecked blankness of her focus.  
  
If Scott has failed in gaining her attention, not much else will probably stand a chance, but not trying at all feels wrong: “Jean?” he asks, leaning forward in his chair and tensing up, waiting… for what?  
  
There’s an answer hanging there, though she’s clinging onto it and smothering it down and away from the surface. Not for long, though. Now that they all know there’s something _to_ know, Jean won’t understand how to tuck that way.  
  
“My mother,” she repeats blankly, seasoned with a hint of sadness.  
  
“Yes. You mentioned to me once that you had one parent still alive. Since all of Scott’s family is here and will be easily informed, I thought it prudent to suggest that you contacted your mother.”  
  
Still, Jean answers nothing.  
  
Scott blinks. “Your… mother?” Bless Scott: he isn’t pressing, but only worried, confused. Neither of those—they aren’t—they—  
  
Erik would have demanded answers. There would have been accusations, and anger at having been denied vital information. Worry would have factored, but it would have manifested as a smothering possessiveness. It would have felt like most of their interactions: tainted, addictive, and unhealthy.  
  
For Jean, that may well be the crux of her relationship with her mother: the relationship can’t be dismissed, but judging from her reaction, it must be riddled with problems. There’s more too—because Jean smiles when Scott speaks, and while it’s soft and sad, the resignation is far too familiar: it’s born from a knowledge of what can and can’t be avoided, and possibly a person’s own weakness in being unable to let go.  
  
“Emma Frost is my mother,” Jean says dully.  
  
What?  
  
Jean shakes her head, tickling her hair against the side of Scott’s face, but he doesn’t move, apparently too transfixed to bother. “I didn’t say anything because I didn’t want it to matter.”  
  
Bloody hell.  
  
 _Frost_.  
  
Jean. Dear, sweet Jean, who is shyness laced with strength, who wouldn’t put anyone to mind of Frost. Let alone…  
  
Let alone _Shaw._  
  
Because if Frost is her mother? Shaw is her father.  
  
“I—“ Scott nods, swallowing. “Yeah, all right. We’ll—it’s all right, okay? You could have told me. It doesn’t need to matter if you don’t want it to matter.”  
  
If only that were true. In a perfect world, it wouldn’t have to matter at all. But, in reality, the past is never far behind. Jean will carry the baggage given to her by her parents for the rest of her life. She doesn’t need to be defined by it, but it will always _matter_.  
  
The gods bless Scott, though, for being willing to attempt otherwise.  
  
Jean’s mouth tugs up, and while there’s no doubt that she’s aware of exactly how impossible his assurances are, she leans into him anyway, sighing and tucking her head against his shoulder. “I should have explained before.”  
  
No, not exactly—but _Frost_ should have. All this time, he’s had Shaw’s daughter caring for David, and… it doesn’t matter. It’s _Jean_. It could never matter. But he still should have been allowed to _know_.  
  
Gods, the things Jean has been through. Frost, and Shaw—and those years in the palace.  
  
And… all that power suddenly makes a great deal of sense. Telepathy? That’s Frost. Energy manipulation manifesting as telekinesis? Shaw. Together, a very powerful mutant.  
  
“In that case—“ How good: his voice is even and doesn’t choke up, which is rather an accomplishment, “I suppose your mother will find out where you’ve gone regardless of whether or not you tell her.” Keep things normal, keep them practical, as though a major revelation hasn’t been spread out wide for viewing. “Though, I’ll hold off if you’d like to tell her first.”  
  
What a conversation _that_ would be. Frost—she doesn’t seem the motherly type. Though, that’s not fair. Ultimately, she did what was best for her daughter, smuggling her out of Genosha, when she must have stood to receive a fair amount of Shaw’s ire when Jean’s absence was discovered.  
  
As a parent, having sent David away—sending him away—letting his baby go—  
  
There is nothing in the world that cuts so deeply as that.  
  
Agreeable or not, Frost has his sympathy.  
  
It must have been gutting: her daughter had been there, at her side… and then she wasn’t. There would have been Shaw, asking questions, raging, and—Frost would have known by then, probably far before then, that Shaw was twisted. But to be left with him after having sent her daughter away….  
  
Like sending David away. That’s not an ache that ever fades. Waking up at night, terrified that the baby is gone, even when he’s back, snuggled safely in the next room over, and Erik wouldn’t object to letting Charles get up to check on him, though gods forbid Erik be allowed to tend to David—  
  
Stop. Just _stop_. The situations are similar. Leave it at that. Look at Frost for _Frost_ , for her situation, for _Jean,_ and not at the parallels.  
  
Frost: she may not talk about it, but, looking back, she’s always been dreadfully quiet when she watches Jean. The two seldom actually interact, but, in retrospect, this explains why more than a few times he’s caught Frost watching Jean. He’d attributed it to fascination with Jean’s powers, and on a good day, also to a wistful consideration of Frost’s own child, gone as she was. To think she was _watching_ her child. She wasn’t obvious, and half the time Frost’s observation was out of the corner of her eye, but, thinking on it now, it makes sense, the way she’d reoriented herself to wherever Jean was in a room at any given time—just a way to perpetually clutch the comfort of an awareness of Jean’s presence.  
  
Frost cares. She may hold herself at a distance, but it’s safe to say that she cares.  
  
“I…” Scott stops and swallows down whatever he was going to say, glancing from Charles to Jean. He’s trying his best—and, with any luck, that might be good enough. He’ll make mistakes, but Jean will give him the benefit of the doubt, and with Scott trying this hard and attending so desperately to what Jean wants, he might yet succeed in working this situation through with the least amount of pain. “This might not be the best place for a discussion. Sir, if you don’t mind?”  
  
He waves them both off and nods toward the tent door. “My apologies, Jean: I never meant to drag up a difficult subject.”  
  
She gives him a small smile and slips a hand down Scott’s arm to his hand, sneaking her fingers in between his and twinning their hands together. “It was never meant to be a lie,” she admits. “Not all secrets are, you know. I just…” She pauses, glancing at Scott, “ _I_ didn’t want to think about it. It… isn’t the same.”  
  
“Isn’t the same?” That’s rather vague.  
  
For a moment, there’s a small flare of fire in her eye, but it fades out quickly—and it was never for him. Whatever it was, it was internal, running off the fuel of her own memories. “Not every secret is like yours. Or like my… mother’s. _You_ don’t have anything to apologize for.”  
  
Not like Erik. Not like Shaw. That’s the implication, isn’t it? And, goodness, has he just been given a lesson by a teenager? Worse yet, it may turn out to be a _correct_ lesson. By the gods, though, may she actually live by what she’s just said. The wrongs committed against her are not hers to apologize for—and people _would_ blame her. Many, if they knew of her association with Shaw, would pin the blame on _her_ , for lack of a better target.  
  
It’s so easy to accuse, to argue that Shaw wouldn’t have done… something. Pick an event. It doesn’t matter. It’s always something. People will argue that, if not for Jean, Shaw might not have done it. They’ll argue she should have stopped him. They’ll say she was a coward for running. In the absence of anyone else to blame, they will blame _her_.  
  
They will _always_ blame.  
  
Just like, like…  
  
Erik never would have taken Westchester if _he_ hadn’t avoided the bond and taken refuge there.  
  
If he’d killed Erik, none of this would have happened.  
  
If he’d accepted the bond, allowed Erik to do as he liked, thousands of lives would have been spared.  
  
And it’s all true. It’s absolutely, shatteringly true, but at the time alternatives hadn’t seemed possible. Cowardice? Maybe. But who the hell could look this situation in the face and not make mistakes? It was weakness, but—fuck, is mercy a weakness? Killing Erik—they’ll always blame him for not killing Erik. But it isn’t—killing Erik—it isn’t—  
  
It’s weakness, not to be able to do it. Or maybe it’s mercy. They aren’t mutually exclusive. It’s not so far a stretch to think it’s a bit of both.  
  
Whatever it is, he has the rest of his life to pay his debt of guilt. It’s always like that. Most nights, sleep doesn’t come easily, and when it does, it holds an awful lot of death. All those people who died in the first invasion, and he couldn’t have stopped it, but—  
  
Erik was pushing for the North for reasons beyond just wanting his mate back. That’s become increasingly clear, the more his actions have come to light. He wanted to consolidate rule. Having a mate hiding in Westchester simply accelerated Erik’s desperation and prompted him to invade earlier. In some respect, that’s actually helped circumstances now: in his rush to take the North, Erik never properly stabilized the South. If he _had_ waited and taken care to settle things in the area he already ruled, he still would have invaded eventually—and, if he’d waited, he might have been better prepared to hold the land permanently.  
  
“Thank you, Jean,” he says quietly, watching as they turn to leave. She looks back at him one last time, but her gaze is too shuttered to read properly, and he breaks it off before she can look away first. A second later she’s ducking out the door ahead of Scott.  
  
Self-control is strengthened in situations like these—and it’s a damn good testimony to his own ability to cobble himself together that he doesn’t drop his head down into his hands until she’s gone.  
  
All those secrets… and Jean’s secret might not have been meant to be a lie, but _his_ —so much of his _life_ is a lie.  
  
Secret keeping is second nature at this point. All those secrets, though—and his part in them. Assigning fault is dreadfully easy, and his own mind isn’t perfectly reliable on that count, when his memories have been altered. Who knows what else he’s hiding. In a way, he’ll always be a bundle of secrets.  
  
But those secrets are _his._ His to reveal as he does or doesn’t please.  
  
Some of Jean’s hidden spots surely have the potential to cause damage as well. She has a well of power, of something swirling inside her, hidden from even herself. But Jean—she can be better. Not everyone is like him. Not everyone is tied down by his or her secrets. Jean—she understands.  
  
And: she’s telling him that _he_ is all right.  
  
Not guilty. Not to blame.  
  
It was never his fault in the first place that any of this was necessary: that Frost had to send away her child, that Jean lied about it, that the hidden parts of him were dragged into the light by Erik, that he lied about what he was in the first place, or that any of this has leaked out.  
  
It’s a nice thought, though not a practical one. Guilt is so very easily passed around, after all, and to say that he’s entirely absolved of everything that’s happened would hardly be accurate. After allowing himself to grow closer to Erik, and after running, causing Erik to chase him to Westchester in the first place—there was no other alternative, but it doesn’t mean his hands are clean.  
  
But Jean can’t possibly hope to understand the intricacies of his relationship with Erik, or the fallout from their confrontation. She’s fantastically clever, but she’s young yet. That’s not to say she hasn’t seen the world—she’s seen things no one should ever see—but it isn’t the same. She hasn’t felt the grinding years in the way that Ororo has—and neither has he.  
  
It’s all a matter of perspective, really.  
  
“It’s never simple, is it?” he says to David, who has flopped down on his stomach on a blanket that’s been laid for him. Currently, he’s very happily dousing a teething ring in what looks like gallons of drool. “You’ll have a sibling soon, you know.”  
  
David drops the ring and grins at him. If only everyone else could be so happy at the news. If only _he_ could be happy at the news. “Dada! Come play?”  
  
“Not at the moment, My Darling. Daddy needs to talk with Dr. McCoy.”  
  
David frowns, but he must not be overly put out: he merely flops over with a sigh, scrunching his face up and staring down at his toys with concentrated scrutiny. Then, another sigh.  
  
What David is doing looks harmless, and for the longest time it had been easiest to assume that this was simply how David looked upon not getting his way. To some extent, that’s true—but he also makes this face when he’s confused at someone else’s behavior or answers. He’s also less prone to that expression when he’s in an isolated location, far enough away that, oh, say he couldn’t read the mind of a soldier passing by the tent _._  
  
If ever there were a chance that David was not some sort of telepath, that chance has vanished over the past few months. The degree to which he’s taking in the mental information of others appears to be growing, and what was before mere thoughts and feelings now seems to be snatches of actual thought. At this point he’s using his gifts to try to clarify his world: in this case, Daddy is busy, and David doesn’t understand why, so he reaches out to those around his father in hopes that they will answer his question more thoroughly.  
  
It should be beautiful. Mutations _are_ beautiful. But being a telepath is difficult, and while David is a guardian, his telepathy will still enhance the effects of any bond he makes. As a creature of the mind, a mental bond will hit him twice as hard.  
  
He’d really do better never to bond at all.  
  
And he’s done a bang-up job modeling _that_ for his son, hasn’t he?  
  
“Sir?”  
  
Ah, Hank. Quite a timely distraction—and a welcome one. After all Hank has done for him—regaining the memory of the birth control is rather bittersweet now—he’s become a genuine friend. “Come in, Hank. Do sit down.” He gestures to a chair. “It’s nothing, really, I just wanted a quick word on the medical team’s level of preparations. I’m very sorry to have pushed things up, but…” He trails off, sighing. “Honestly, Hank, this is the best opportunity we’ve had. Erik is desperate, and that’s made him sloppy.”  
  
Hank nods, causing his hair to flop down into his eyes. He isn’t bothered, but he does stretch his hands out to perch on his knees, knocking his lower legs together and fidgeting. It isn’t nerves at Charles’ presence, as it might have been months ago, but only an inability to quiet his limbs when his mind is so active with the worries of their situation.  
  
“It makes sense,” Hank admits finally. “The biological draw of knowing his mate is pregnant—it—well, he wouldn’t have felt it before you made contact, but by opening the bond, he touched your altered state, and his body recognized the condition you’re in. Knowing that you’re putting yourself in danger—he’s desperate to you get you back.”  
  
“I know.” Like the first time, when Erik took Westchester. And Erik won’t bother to check those impulses this time around either. He _could_. But he won’t.  
  
And so they’ll meet him on the field and show exactly how terrible a choice it _is_.  
  
“Dada!”  
  
David isn’t Erik’s child, but if impatience were contagious… David, as sweet-natured as he is, never quite grasped the concept of being ignored when he wishes for attention. That’s logical enough: after having David away for so long, any sign of discomfort from his son is enough to draw every scrap of his notice.  
  
Ignoring Hank’s surprised blinking, he moves over toward his son and scoops him up. It isn’t as easy as it used to be: the extra weight unbalances him, and his back twinges slightly as he settles David on his hip. “Say hello to Hank, Darling,” he tells David, carrying him over toward Hank.  
  
Hank isn’t much for babies. As a physician, he’s required to see to them on occasion, but he regards them with a fear usually reserved for porcelain and fine China.  
  
“He’s really quite durable, you know,” he jokes at the sight of Hank’s stricken face, though he doesn’t attempt to hand David over to him, but instead begins to pace, bouncing David lightly until his son laughs in delight. He’s such an easy child to please. “He won’t break.”  
  
“You should start accustoming him to being held less,” Hank blurts out, shoving the bridge of his glasses back up his nose where they’ve slipped down. “With the pregnancy, he’ll be too heavy to lift, and…” He trails off, cocking his head and sighing. “Sorry. I know you don’t want to hear… that.”  
  
No, but that doesn’t make it less true. It doesn’t make any of this less true. Not the danger of lifting David when he can’t hold him properly, not the danger to his own back, to the baby…  
  
To the _baby_.  
  
If only lifting David were the greatest danger on that count.  
  
“I’m going to have to fight, you know,” he tells Hank quietly. “The baby—do you think…?”  
  
It’s a terrible prospect, but the alternative is worse. Endanger the pregnancy—one blow in the wrong place would be sufficient—or run the risk that the child will be born safely into a world where, if he or she were to be a bearer, it would mean that insanity repeats itself. For his child to be trapped in this life…  
  
Better for him or her to die in the womb. It’s a bitter thought—a nauseating one—but it’s the truth.  
  
And never, _never_ has he wanted to smash out his own brains more than when he thinks along those lines.  
  
“There’s always a risk,” Hank says honestly. “But with the right armour… and no one is going to want to physically harm you. It’s a wonderful advantage, really. Lehnsherr will—well—I mean— _I_ wouldn’t want to be the soldier responsible for harming you.”  
  
No, that’s true. But in the chaos of a fight, one person who doesn’t look closely enough could end everything. Erik could draw and quarter the person afterward if he wished, but it wouldn’t change the outcome.  
  
“And it’s pretty obvious that Lehnsherr would never physically fight you himself.”  
  
“Is it?” He tucks David more securely into his side and speeds up his pacing, twice as fast as before. The energy just won’t burn. “The bond doesn’t prevent guardians from physically harming their bearers.”  
  
Hank shrugs and frowns at the increased motion. His eyes follow the line of the pacing back and forth, back and forth, until he blinks and looks away, a bit cross-eyed and most likely dizzy. “Well, no, but—there are studies. Not well published—of course they aren’t, no one wants to talk about this kind of thing—but people have looked at it, and—you know, violence between bonded pairs. And there’s good evidence to support the theory that it’s very, _very_ difficult to kill your bonded mate. Maybe impossible under certain circumstances. Some studies suggest your mind will self-sabotage you, and while it’s not proven—I just—well, it isn’t _likely_ to happen. At all.”  
  
Hank wouldn’t be the first one to say so. No one in the South openly studies that sort of thing, since it would be a denial of the wedded, loving bliss that supposedly exists in the bond anyway, but there have been studies in the North, and even from anonymous sources in the South, that suggest that killing one’s mate is… more than difficult. Not impossible, but it’s true that the very few known cases when it has happened have occurred in the heat of the moment: there’s never been a case of pre-meditated murder between a bonded guardian and a bearer. It’s conceivable that Erik could lose his temper on the battlefield and kill him, and while that’s very unlikely, it’s still more likely than Erik plotting harm ahead of time.  
  
Good to know, but not particularly relevant: _that_ , at least, was never a concern.  
  
“I don’t know if I believe that you can’t kill your mate, but… Erik isn’t going to try to kill me, Hank,” he says quietly, finally ceasing his pacing to fix Hank with a steady stare.  
  
Hank nods in acknowledgement. “No. That’s what I’m telling you. Sort of. I guess—I think that maybe you need to think about what that _means_.”  
  
“Oh?” It’s an excellent advantage in war, for certain. But, beyond that, it simply is what it is, yes? A fact of life.  
  
“He might not kill you—but what else _would_ he do? You’ve risked a lot—far more than most bearers. You _are_ risking a lot. If you were to lose the baby, what Lehnsherr might do…”  
  
Surely his tongue has all of a sudden become too big for his mouth. _How_ is one supposed to respond to that? “I’ll risk what I have to,” he answers. “If that means—if the baby…”  
  
There’s the fact, staring him down: it’s a matter of facing it head on and doing what he must. He can. He _will_. There is no alternative option. There are untold numbers of people at risk. This _has_ to happen.  
  
“If I have to, I will make a choice that will kill me,” he says finally, trying to wrestle his tone into a cadence that sounds less like it’s been through a meat grinder. “I don’t fear that it would be at Erik’s hand. But… I do understand that everything I’m about to do could go terribly wrong.”  
  
If that happens, Erik wouldn’t _need_ to kill him. If David died, if the baby died…  
  
He’d be dead too. It might just take a little longer.  
  
Hank looks away then, down toward his hands: he slowly clasps them together, wringing them silently and nodding. The motion bobs his head in a rhythm not dissimilar to the methodical dip and rise of a horse’s head when it pulls a cart. “As long as you understand…”  
  
“I do.”  
  
All too well. And, knowing that, surely no one could blame him for holding David just a little bit closer.  
  
\---------------------  
  
The world flips so quickly.  
  
It’s eight o’clock in the morning on a Tuesday. David left early this morning. The sun is bright, and there’s a nervous slice of tension in the air, whipping the camp into motion seen only in the hours before a battle.  
  
This is the world gone insane.  
  
This is the _world_.  
  
“Get me my gun.”  
  
Frost’s crystalline laugh chases out of the tent the young soldier to whom he issued the command, and while Charles frowns, he doesn’t bother to intervene. A solider who can’t handle Frost’s needling is hardly fit to face a true fight: Frost is essentially akin to a trial run. Though, it _would_ be nice if she’d keep her mirth over his commands to herself.  
  
Already, he’s fighting a friend: he hardly needs to witness friendly fire among his troops in addition.  
  
Though, it’s a pertinent reminder of how very quickly things change when it comes to allies and enemies.  
  
“Metal bullets for your metal-bending husband?” Frost quips once the soldier has left. She crosses her arms, her eyes tracking his progress across the tent. “I don’t know if anyone’s told you, Sugar, but—“  
  
“There are other men than Erik on that battlefield.”  
  
“And you’re touched in the head if you think any of them are prepared to shed your blood.” Touched in the head? Perhaps, but Frost’s glee at strapping a nice little handgun to her thigh doesn’t say much for her sanity either. Where the hell did _she_ learn to wield a gun? Shaw wasn’t likely to have been keen on letting her learn… “Lehnsherr will have them miles beyond terrified, just from the thought of what will happen if someone killed you.”  
  
So Hank has already said, and with infinitely more tact. The thing is, though, this warning couldn’t feel more different. Hank was honestly concerned, but Frost—she snaps at the information with a ravenous viciousness disguised as nonchalance or even as amusement. For her, though, it feels personal—and _not_ with him. If he dies, she’ll shed no tears.  
  
Somehow, this connects to the grudge she keeps simmering with Erik. _Somehow._  
  
“I’m certain there’s some enterprising young upstart who would still fancy a go at it.” He slides a finger in between his belt and his side, checking the tightness. Not bad. Nothing sits quite right when the sword is a bit long, but… it has to be this sword. Leaving it behind grates in all the wrong ways.  
  
“Oh, sure. There’s always someone who believes he’s doing what’s right. But your husband is obsessed, Sweetie: he’ll have a veritable security team ready to snipe anyone who even looks at you wrong.”  
  
“We don’t have any proof that Erik has employed the use of sniper rifles, and if we did—“  
  
Reaching back, Frost tugs her tied-back hair tighter and angles a look of raw skepticism in his direction. “Some days, I admit that I wonder whether the problems you two have actually center on the fact that neither one of you seems to have the first clue about who the other really is. Your husband is _mad_ over you, Xavier. He would do anything and everything to have you—and you doubt that he’ll have people lined up to protect you?”  
  
“Right now, I think he’d prefer to give me a beating himself.”  
  
Verbally, at least. Erik hasn’t shown himself prone to anything worse.  
  
“Oh, please.” She scoffs, framing the noise with a dainty toss of her head, rustling the tail of hair that stems, perfectly coifed, from the back of her head. They’re going to battle, for godsakes, and here she is, practically dressing for dinner, albeit in armor. “It’s considered good form for a guardian to take a naughty bearer over his knee every once in a while, but I’d guess you’ve been spared that indignity, am I right?”  
  
Spared _that_ indignity, perhaps, but not spared from having to talk about the hypothetical situation. Lucky him. Ignoring the irritated itch that practically begs for a reply, he slips the bulletproof vest over his head and straps it on. He’s damned lucky to have one of these. They’re not exactly common, and he has one only because he kept a few of them stored in the armory from before Erik took Westchester the first time.  
  
“And I bet Erik thinks you’ve been _very_ naughty, am I right, Charles?”  
  
She’s the kind of sugar that makes people’s teeth ache—and that saccharine slip of a smile isn’t fooling anyone. She’s _enjoying_ this. “Are you fantasizing about my sex life?” he asks blandly. The cover that goes over the vest is odd, fitted out with ceramic pieces. No good for stopping a clean blow with a sword—metal would be so much sturdier—but wearing a vest of metal when his husband could literally pluck him off the field with it would be the height of stupidity. Donning a metal sword isn’t much better, but Erik isn’t going to disarm him in the middle of a war—not unless he can get close enough to ensure that nothing happens.  
  
And wearing _Erik’s_ sword, that he _stole_ from Erik? Insane. But… it’s there, strapped to his hip, and the thought of leaving it behind is too persistent an ache to actually consider. The weight of it is comforting, tugging down on his left side, providing a comforting presence whenever he moves.  
  
“He could flog you instead, you know. Publically.” Odd, but her voice has… evened. It’s not quite so teasing now, almost like….  
  
“Are you trying to warn me?” Pausing, he slides his hand down onto the pommel of his sword. It doesn’t do much to stabilize him when he turns to look at her, watching a whole lot of nothing play over her face. She’d be excellent at poker. “About what he might do?”  
  
“I’m telling you what he _could_ do. What it’s traditional for guardians to do to bearers who have caused the kind of trouble that _you_ have caused.”  
  
Traditional? There’s nothing traditional about him and Erik. “Erik is far too jealous to ever have me stripped half naked in public.” And that’s what would happen: they truss bearers up like that in the public squares, with their hands tied up to the top of the post. If the guardian wants, someone else can take the job of whipping the bearer, though it’s the guardian’s right to do it himself if he wants. It’s always public, and it never fails to draw a crowd: bloodshed unfailingly does, regardless of whether or not that bloodletting is supposed to be fatal—and in this case it isn’t. Guardians are precious resources, and while flaying their backs open is acceptable, damage that’s extensive enough to cause the threat of death is out of the question.  
  
Essentially, Erik has the right to work him over in public and put him in a great deal of pain—but not to kill him.  
  
Erik wouldn’t do it.  
  
He has many faults, but he isn’t that kind of sadist.  
  
“Probably true,” Frost agrees. “But he’s… you know he’s furious. If you lose today, he’s going to make you regret it.”  
  
Undoubtedly. The question is: _how_? “He wouldn’t do me real harm.” Not physical. Not lasting. He’s never shown any inclination for corporeal punishment: the fallout from this would be confinement, and almost certainly a loss of privilege.  
  
Privilege: as though it were a concession in the first place, rather than a list of things that never should have been in question.  
  
“No,” Frost answers, rolling the word out until it flicks off the tip of her tongue. “But, even if he doesn’t, do you really want to return to the way things were before?”  
  
She was never so concerned prior to this. And there’s no alternative anyway. There never was. That’s the point. Send David away, hide him, try to drive Erik back once and for all, and then sue for peace. Those weekends won’t look so bad to Erik once they’re the only thing on offer. But, if Charles were to lose, there are… things, that he could do. There won’t be another chance after this: running again—how many times can he do it?  
  
Running again, with the baby, and… if he loses, and he finds himself at Erik’s mercy, then a new strategy would be necessary. A new version, of what he’d only considered before: give Erik what he wants, and bend him on the basis of begging. Accommodating in bed, and, in exchange, things _he_ wants. It would take some time, to twist Erik into that mindset, but enough good sex, affection…  
  
The danger being, he could very well catch himself in his own trap. To be happy with Erik… He mustn’t let himself grow used to it. Mustn’t let Erik spoil and dote, and let himself fall into a place where his mind grows to used to it, to Erik, to the attention and the sex, and that gods damned slice of love that was always, _always_ the problem—  
  
And the baby. The baby—Erik _can’t_ be allowed to raise the baby.  
  
It’s all such a risk.  
  
Best just not to be captured in the first place, yes?  
  
Because, if he does win—it’s dangerously early to be thinking about that, but _if he did_ : Erik would be on his knees in front of _Charles_ for a change. Negotiations would be in _Charles’_ hands, with him setting terms, and Erik taking what he could get. Eventually— _eventually_ if things change, things might be… different.  
  
What a thought. If he can just _win_ ….  
  
“I’m positive that I can handle Erik,” he assures Frost solemnly. “What you’re thinking of—it’s not what he’d do.” And it won’t matter, because being caught by Erik is simply off the table. It _cannot_ happen.  
  
“Be sure: because if he drags you off that field, you’re completely in his hands.”  
  
“Yes, and if _I_ win, he’s completely in _mine_.”  
  
If he had to guess, he’d characterize the bloom of emotion that lights up her skin as a variation of satisfaction, maybe pleasure. It’s surprising, to find that this is what she wanted to hear, but not completely shocking: she has as much reason to want to see Erik fall as anybody does.  
  
“Just checking,” she says. “I wanted to make sure.”  
  
“Make sure?”  
  
“That I’m not throwing in my lot with someone who secretly _wants_ to lose.”  
  
Someone with less self control would have slapped her by now. For her to even _suggest_ that… “I’ve had rather enough of bowing to Erik’s every whim, thank you,” he says instead, as clipped and vicious as he can be without actually translating his tone into physical action.  
  
Frost, apparently unmoved, marches over to the side of the tent, propping her leg up on one of the chairs and adjusting her boot. “Haven’t we all?” Amazing, how she’s so smooth about it, motions fluid and easy, and, once she has her trouser leg tucked into the boot to her satisfaction, she straightens back up, tall and proud and completely uncowed by the idea that she’s about to enter a war. “Honey, we’re going to fuck him over.”  
  
Rather uncouth way to put it, but Frost is exactly vicious enough to manage it without sounding coarse. “Here,” he says by means of answer, plucking a map off the table and shaking it open, pressing his hand across it until it lies flat over the table.  
  
“We’ve already been over this, Xavier.”  
  
“Once more can’t hurt.”  
  
He hasn’t gotten where he’s at by not being prepared. That’s half the point of military preparation: having plans for your plans, and backup plans for those too. And, in this case, so much can go wrong.  
  
“We’ve got the advantage as far as geography.” The battle will take place down past Westchester’s walls, where Westchester, Boston, and the Upper North have mixed their troops and set a perimeter. The problem being, the line is set on the edge of a ridge, with a large, wide valley in between: hell for the advancing troops—Erik’s men—since it will mean plunging through the valley and ascending the ridge while being fired upon, but also a danger in the event that Westchester’s troops move to drive Erik’s men back. They’ll both tangle down in the valley, with each side firing on the other, and if something goes wrong, and Erik finds a way to sneak around behind and cut them off from Westchester, they’ll essentially be forced down into the valley with nowhere to go. It’s very, very important, then, that Erik isn’t able to outflank them. It will mean decreasing their numbers at the front itself in favor of lining the route to Westchester and making certain that Erik can’t creep around behind.  
  
“Yes,” Frost agrees, tapping the line of the ridge with her finger. “Not bad. A very hard location to _lose_. But we both know it’ll be nearly impossible to get a clean win. We can’t take Lehnsherr’s ridge anymore than he can easily take ours: no one scales rock like that.”  
  
He nods. “We knew that going in: we can’t beat Erik outright. It’s not feasible: if we advance any further south, we’ll meet increased numbers and the threat of being cut off from any base. The point is to establish a border _here_. It’s not perfect, but splitting the North off from the rest of Erik’s land and establishing that as a kingdom all it’s own is the best we can do at this point. And, as you so kindly pointed out, we’ve already gone over this: too late to back out now, Frost.”  
  
As theatrically as she rolls her eyes, it’s a wonder they don’t get stuck in her skull. “You’re the one who wanted to review plans.”  
  
True. Though, this isn’t really the part he wanted to discuss. But they’ll get to the rest. “Alex has command of the rearguard: if Erik’s men try to outflank us, they’ll meet that force. I’m confident Alex can keep the supply lines secure. There’s always the threat of teleportation, but Azazel’s limits appear, thus far, to be a half a dozen people.”  
  
“This isn’t the part you really want to talk about, Sweetie.”  
  
Leave it Frost to call him on his stalling. And, while her tact might be severely lacking, she’s dead on right. “I think we’ve considered the last part quite enough.” A lie—and a transparent one, when he’d orchestrated this conversation in the first place in order to smooth over the last bits of their plan one final time.  
  
There’s no doubt that she doesn’t believe him, but she restrains her derision and limits herself to one half-laugh that raises and drops her chest with more enthusiasm than is found in the accompanying noise. Nothing more than a little huff—but it gets the point across. “And we’re in agreement on _that_. At this point, Xavier, you and I either know our roles or we don’t: another run-through won’t help when we’re this far in.”  
  
“It never hurts to be thorough.”  
  
She digs her foot down into the dirt floor, glaring at him. “Actually, it _does_. I have a headache already—and it hasn’t even gone nine yet. Your constant fussing is putting me off, and with as much of a mess as the rest of the day promises to be, I don’t have the patience for you this early.”  
  
Patience? Does Emma Frost ever belong in the same vicinity as patience? Seems a bit of an insult—toward patience, that is—to be honest.  
  
“Then I suppose you’re in luck,” he answers dryly. Folding up the maps draws the string of anxiety tight inside his chest, but he forces himself to do it, folding and tucking them away at the corner of the desk. Frost is right: he knows this plan inside and out. If Erik does as predicted… but it all rides on that. On Charles, on knowing Erik, on guessing at the resources at Erik’s disposal and how Erik will use them. It’s a puzzle made up of Erik’s predictions for Charles’ actions, and Erik’s reactions to those predictions, and a counter to those reactions. If he knows Erik as well as he thinks he does, this is doable. Winnable. Or at least salvageable.  
  
But if he’s wrong…  
  
“They’re waiting on my command,” he says, straightening up. The weight of his padding shifts with him, and the sword at his left hip tugs downward, comforting in its realness. Erik could disarm him at any moment, but he won’t, not in the midst of a battlefield. And that boy is bringing back his gun, meant for the holster at his shoulder. He’s well-armed.  
  
 _Very_ well-armed: strapped onto the scabbard of the sword is another small sheath, hidden against Charles’ hip. And, in it, there’s a ceramic knife. Misdirection is an easy thing in times like these: Erik may run his power over every inch of the metal, and he will find what he’s looking for—and, satisfied, he will miss anything else. With any luck…  
  
Not that luck is particularly trustworthy. Luck should never be relied upon—but in this case there are plans for the plans, and failsafes besides. This far into this mess, the matter has boiled down, and, when distilled, it’s astonishingly simple: this is he and Erik, playing for lives and kingdoms and power, and proving once and for all who can outmaneuver whom.  
  
“If they’re waiting on your command, then hurry up,” Frost snips. But the bite in her tone isn’t truly venomous—almost fond, actually. “I’m quite anxious to see the look on Lehnsherr’s face when he realizes his darling has fired a volley of arrows at him.”  
  
“It won’t be me _personally_ doing the firing.”  
  
“Giving the order, then. Same thing.” Evidently enough to please her: she resembles the cat that got not only the cream, but possibly the entire dairy.  
  
“Yes. Exactly as much responsibility.”  
  
Tricky thing, that. If he wins, it means the victory is laid squarely at his feet. And, if he loses, the blame is dumped on his shoulders, pinned straight to him—and Erik will always know exactly who gave the order to try to drive him back away from Westchester.  
  
He’s about to spark a military battle against his husband. Husband, opponent, enemy general—this is him and Erik, and everything between them, because, after this, there will never be another chance. Whether or not Erik gives him an opening, a man can only fight so long before he wears out. If the battle goes to Erik, if Westchester falls again…  
  
He’s five months pregnant. He’s _tired_. If he falls this time around, there may not be any getting up. Instead, there will be a new baby to think about, the reality of defeat, Erik’s anger—and so many things, so many reasons to win here and now, and to ensure that never, _never_ happens.  
  
Go big or go home, as the younger recruits sometimes say.  
  
“Ready, then?” he asks, gesturing toward the door flap.  
  
The grin Frost gives him is nothing short of terrifying. “Sweetie, I’m waiting on _you_.”  
  
Yes. Both her and the world at large.  
  
So, then: it’s time to set the world back to turning. Working, that is, the way it _should_ have worked all along.


	34. Chapter 34

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Drumroll please! We are finally at _that_ point!

When Charles was young, small enough that his father was alive and the world had  not yet irrevocably crystallized into a fundamentally skeptical place, his father had taken him aside and taught him to play chess. They’d spent the morning in the garden, with the board stretched out on a table between them, high enough up that Charles had needed a cushion to properly see over the edge. It was all very exciting: the gleam of the carved pieces, the warmth of the sun, his father’s undivided attention, and the naughtiness of escaping from his lessons for the morning. Everything about it had seemed perfect…  
  
…until around the fifth time his father had soundly trounced him, and everything had grown a bit duller, run through with streaks of failure and frustration, and he’d begun to cry.  
  
Rather than reprimanding him as his mother would have done, or hitting him as Kurt almost certainly would have, his father had risen from his seat and stepped around the table to pluck Charles up out of the chair and into his arms. He’d snuggled Charles down against his chest and had taken to pacing about the garden, humming a pleasant melody under his breath.  
  
When Charles had finally calmed, Brian Xavier had seated them both under one of the trees and begun to explain.  
  
There were many people in Charles’ life who would allow him the illusion of victory on account of his status, his father had told him. No one thinks to beat a king at chess. No one dares to challenge him about most things, in fact—until someone _does_. And then, if he’s never been taught that he _can_ lose, he _will_ lose, and he will lose _everything_. As frustrating as it is to lose at chess, there are, his father had explained, _far worse things to lose, Charles, and you shouldn’t grow up thinking that people will always let you win. They won’t—not when it really counts, and it’s best not to be in the habit of expecting that they will._  
  
Charles never did beat his father at chess: two weeks later, Brian Xavier had received a missive from Sebastian Shaw, and he’d departed for Genosha. He’d never come home. An accident in the capital, Shaw had said. A tragedy. Couldn’t be helped.  
  
But, while Brian Xavier may never have returned to raise his son, the reality of his logic hovers over the slaughter of a battlefield, stark and bloody before Charles’ eyes.  
  
It’s as his father said: no one has ever handed Charles a victory—not when it really counts.  
  
Today least of all. And his husband, _never_.  
  
Erik is doing his very best to wipe Westchester’s forces clean away. The truth of that is clear in each volley of artillery fire, in the guns that Erik has deigned to use in select locations, despite the impracticality of equipping them too widely, when so few of the soldiers are trained with them. And, as a general rule, Erik’s forces aren’t taking prisoners.  
  
That’s not especially surprising, particularly in the case of Westchester’s human forces: Erik, given his viewpoint, has no reason to spare them—and he doesn’t. It’s most expedient not to take captives at this juncture, and so he chooses not to do so. Mutants, though—he isn’t showing much mercy there either. The special division lining the ridge is taking more fire than the mixed mutant and human divisions, if that’s possible. Though, it makes sense: a sudden onslaught of mutant abilities requires an immediate counter. Having ice spewed out down into a valley—Bobby—as is happening currently requires that fire be shot back—John, wasn’t it? It isn’t the same as bullets.  
  
That said, though: the battle is, on the surface, well matched. As intended, the valley acts as a barrier—one that neither his nor Erik’s men can breach, given the sharp incline on each side. It’s a matter of fighting in the wide space of the middle valley, trapped, with each side firing down on the other: a stalemate, essentially, until one side decides it’s lost too many men.  
  
Already, Erik has sent a squadron of men around the edges of the valley, attempting to outflank Westchester’s forces and cut their supply line, pinching them in on both sides: no retreat, no advance. Erik should have known better: a force led by Sean met him on one side; a force led by Alex on the other. Erik, clever as he is, had then tried to draw both sides out by feigning retreat, before sending a handful of men charging forward, attempting to slip through the cracks that would have been left should either Alex or Sean have advanced their line forward. But, as per orders, they hadn’t: they’d repelled Erik’s forces, giving only slightly—enough to draw the attempt to pass their lines—before snapping back into formation and choking Erik’s handful of men directly in the midst of Westchester’s forces.  
  
There’s no success to be had in _that_ endeavor, as Erik has clearly found.  
  
Erik himself remains on the opposite ridge, a steady figure amidst the gun smoke. He has little regard for the line of fire: so many of Westchester’s weapons are metal. With Shaw, it hadn’t mattered what the weapons were made of, and so much of the weaponry is left over from the era before Erik came to power. Though Westchester did its best to produce alternatives—ceramics, mostly—there’s only so much that can be done in the few months since they’ve regained Westchester. Thankfully, the metal weapons are still good against Erik’s soldiers, and Erik can’t be everywhere at once.  
  
And there’s also the matter of the ceramic knife that’s strapped to Charles’ hip.  
  
If Erik doesn’t sense—if he looks past what he shouldn’t see and focuses on what he expects….  
  
The noise of a quick, perfunctory greeting startles Charles out of his reverie. Armando: “We can’t break his line, My Lord,” he admits. Up close, his skin is glistening with sweat under his helmet, and the edges of his eyes are red, irritated by all the dust that’s been kicked up in the valley—or, though no one wants to admit to it, by the sting of tears that can never quite be held back when men are dying all around. “There’s no way through.”  
  
No. There was never any real hope that they would be able to break the line. What they’ve done is the best they could hope for: they’ve established that Erik can no more break their line than they can break Erik’s. No give, no take. Nothing. A stalemate.  
  
If the battle ends now, the border to Westchester and the North remains _here_. In effect, Erik loses.  
  
“I know,” he agrees, ignoring how bloody tight his stress has wound the muscles in his neck. The number of bodies—has it been worth it? No. It was never worth it. Necessary, but most days necessary hurts every bit as bitterly as unnecessary, when the result is still a slew of corpses. “Call for them to pull back to the ridge. If Erik’s soldiers try to follow us up, shoot them down.”  
  
“I’m sure they’ll try—“  
  
“Then Shoot. Them. Down.” As simple as that. And not particularly simple at all. The rate of his heart has kicked up to a skittering seize, pumping out blood and stress: the consideration of exactly what he’s ordered is squeezing the poor, abused organ into a new and creative chokehold.  
  
“Yes, Sir.”  
  
Logan is leading the charge. Logan, whom Charles once fought in Genosha, with whom he rode on a train, and who—just Logan. At the end of the day, he’s a man like anyone else, who has a girl at home, relying on him; who matters; and whom this war has put in danger. They’ve ruined lives, him and Erik, fighting out their bond on a global stage. Logan is simply another casualty.  
  
Though, Logan won’t die, because he has that privilege… but countless others _will_.  
  
Armando hurries off to give the order, and Charles reaches down to his hip, fingering the pummel of the sword. Erik’s sword. Stolen straight from his desk. Erik must have been seething when he’d woken. Frantic, too, but angry, because that is what Erik _does_.  
  
And he’s going to be beyond furious by the time this is all done.  
  
Burying those thoughts as deeply as possible—not deeply enough, judging by the continued pounding in his chest—Charles creeps down the line of the ridge. He ducks down behind an edge of rock, nodding to the other few soldiers taking cover there. Their eyes widen at the sight of their general, but no one sane in Westchester expects convention from him. A bearer in warfare is strange enough, but a king, a runaway—any number of people must think him mad.  
  
Let them. So long as they win this battle—or don’t lose it, at any rate—they’ll still be allowed to think what they like.  
  
Commanders ought to be back and away from the battle, and the knowledge of that is written in the men’s jerky movements, in their hesitancy to straighten their knees and plunge out from behind the rock and dive forward to repel the onslaught. They’re hesitant to leave him, and shocked that he’s here. Understandable: there’s a time for that convention, when the loss of a general would do more harm than good. That’s not the plan here: bringing others with him to watch his back would only assure that those accompanying him would be dispatched by Erik. So, no: Armando will hold the line; Sean and Alex will secure the flanks; but, beyond that, he’s on his own.  
  
In no time, Erik’s army will be driven back to the opposite ridge, and the valley will be empty.  
  
The valley will be empty, clearly visible from either ridge, where the armies will be perched, looming over the open space, rather like an outdoor amphitheater: both sides with an unobstructed view of anything that might happen in the area between them.  
  
Let no one say he doesn’t know his own terrain. Not only is this area favorable militarily, but it’s the best stretch of land for the final endgame. If this works, the world will be watching him win; and if this fails, the world will see him fall.  
  
Either way, it’s time to move.  
  
Erik’s sword comes free of the scabbard with a screech of metal, and Charles surges forward with the noise ringing in his ears. Blocking it out, he scrambles forward over rock and dirt, careening forward toward the valley below.  
  
Today, the world will have its show.  
  
As it quickly becomes clear, getting down to the valley itself is half the battle. While his own men have strict orders not to shoot anyone who is retreating into the valley—anyone with his or her back turned—there’s always the chance that, in his mad dive down to the area between the two ridges, he could be hit with friendly fire.  
  
In many ways, that might be the more likely option: Erik’s troops ironically prove themselves to be the least concerning of all. Frost was right: they parry any blow he deals them, but anything they return smacks of a desire to disarm. Injuring him not only has been left out of their orders, but it must have been explicitly forbidden, considering how tentative they are about returning his blows with any vicious purpose.  
  
Good. Makes this easier.  
  
At one point in the descent, he catches sight of Logan, though it’s only a snatch of image, stolen as Charles is dodging and weaving, clearing rocks and picking footholds, descending ever downward. Footwork is hard no matter what, but on an incline, with rocks cropping up everywhere in the ground, and with an enemy milling about him, it’s positively lethal. One misstep, and he’ll go rolling.  
  
That point, when it nearly comes, steals his breath: it’s a bizarre miracle that when he overbalances and teeters, a soldier draws up in front of him—the perfect place for self-preservation and battle training to seize control of his reflexes, goading him into lashing out and catching the man up under his ribs with a sword. Though the man falls, sliding back off Charles’ sword, the collision bounces Charles’ weight back up, righting his center of gravity.  
  
Back upright, he launches forward again, vaulting over the man’s body and catching another soldier across the stomach with a somewhat wild slash, just as the man’s—oh, gods, that was his _tongue_ , darting out to try to cause harm. But the sword catches him before that tongue can connect, and the blade slices wildly into him: Erik would despair of his form. He spent so many hours drilling Charles, helping him improve, and to witness that degree of sloppiness would surely depress him.  
  
Or it would if he didn’t have far more important things to worry about at the minute.  
  
The ground levels out on the heels of a sloping curve of grass; Charles’ momentum carries him down beyond it, clearing another cropping of rock half by luck and half by agility. But he’s in the valley proper now, and already the troops are thinning out, brushing by him in the midst of their retreat, half of the men not noticing who he is.  
  
With no one accompanying him, one strike—one enterprising individual, as Emma so aptly pointed out—could be the end of him. Erik would rage—would destroy the person who dealt the blow, but there would be no changing it. Life is fragile that way, and Charles deals out that fragility now just as well as anyone: one hack, another, a thrust, a parry, and a soldier falls on his sword, thumping down to the ground—and it’s brutal, but this one strikes his head on one of the rocks, cracking open his skull with a gush of hot blood.  
  
To the right, there’s a burst of motion, but it isn’t aimed at him. It’s a mutant, shooting what looks like quills at one of Westchester’s soldiers, but the man takes one look at Charles, and, though he’s heaving for breath, he goes still, and then he runs on by.  
  
Clearly, Erik really _has_ given orders. Fine. That essentially makes Genosha’s men sitting ducks in the face of his own personal attacks.  
  
No surprise there: Erik is no doubt willing to sacrifice a few soldiers for the sake of his husband—and it isn’t as though Erik doesn’t have an ultimate play. He’ll have a few of them.  
  
And he’ll try the easiest first.  
  
Turning about the field, he wedges his back to a rock and waits, eyes to the sky and muscles tensed. Even Erik likely knows that an attempt by Azazel will be expected at some point, but it’s a matter of convincing Erik that he’s off his guard, only taking a moment to recover…  
  
To be fair, at the point when he was hurtling down the hill, Azazel’s appearance wouldn’t have been much of a surprise. Erik wants to cut this off early, and an attempt right at the outset of Charles’ appearance would have done exactly that.  
  
Nothing happened.  
  
Soon, then.  
  
In the meantime…  
  
He strikes out as one of Erik’s men sprints by his hiding place. He slices at the man’s shoulder, and it’s a pity—the man sees him right at the last moment and tries to dodge, unbalancing the blow and turning it’s aim off to the side: it catches the man’s flank and fells him, but it isn’t a killing blow. Not at first. It’s not mercy, though, to leave an injured man to bleed to death on the battlefield. Like as not he’ll be trampled.  
  
One good rake of the sword across his jugular finishes what was, from the moment of the first cut, already an inevitably abridged life.  
  
That doesn’t make it easier to see the man’s blood spray, to wince as the sticky redness splashes against his armour. The man plummets to the side in a boneless slump, dead. The end.  
  
“Gods,” Charles chokes out, wiping the back of his mouth with his hand and trying not to gag. It never gets easier. And it _never_ matters—not in the midst of battle. Stop moving, and get killed. Mourn later. That’s the rule of it.  
  
And a very good rule it proves to be when, off to his left, there’s a flash of red.  
  
Oh, gods, move, _move, move—_  
  
He’s dodging, throwing himself out of reach, just as a red hand closes on the space of air where he was a second before.  
  
But… it doesn’t close on anything else. It doesn’t try again. It doesn’t _move._  
  
Well done, Emma.  
  
It’s very neat and very quick, the way she works Azazel’s mind. As one of Erik’s generals, they had pre-determined not to kill him unless absolutely necessary: he’ll make an excellent hostage, and draw a high ransom. That doesn’t mean they’d hoped that catching him was ever going to be easy, but Emma is as efficient as she promised, leeching the consciousness out of his brain and crumpling his body down into a dead faint—though only after she walks him over toward the safety of the rock, where he won’t be trampled. Thoughtful of her. And she’ll send people along shortly to collect him.  
  
“Xavier!”  
  
Who—?  
  
Spinning, he gets his sword out in front of him, and presses his back to the rock again. If someone knows him, calls him by name—he’s no longer a nameless soldier, and anonymity is a protection at this point. With everyone clearing out, those left are the slowest to follow orders, and therefore also the likeliest to disregard Erik’s ban on an attack on his husband’s person.  
  
Looking doesn’t answer the question, and no amount of racking his memory banks draws anything to mind. It’s not anyone he knows. It’s probably no one _Erik_ even knows. Just some disgruntled mutant who hates him—and there are rather a lot of those right now. Whoever it is, he’s young, with dark black hair that’s plastered the front of his head. There’s a thin line of blood trailing down from his temple, catching in the curve of his chin, but besides that he appears to be relatively unscathed.  
  
Most notably, though, he’s making no secret of the fact that he has little care for Erik’s instructions.  
  
“Godsdamned little bitch,” the man snarls, launching forward with a lunge of his sword. It isn’t a coordinated swing: more enthusiasm than skill. Logical: he _does_ seem the type to overestimate himself. “My bother is dead because of you, you know that?”  
  
Ah. A grieving relative. The bitter kind, who’s apt to saint the dead and unleash any kind of retribution that he feels is within his grasp. Very dangerous, and very unpredictable. He could carry through with his attempt, or he could shatter under the force of his grief and go to pieces. It’s never easy to tell.  
  
Actually, that isn’t quite right: in this instance, it’s quickly becoming very clear which type this man is.  
  
Bloodthirsty. _Definitely_ bloodthirsty.  
  
He lashes out again, but it’s not overly challenging to catch the blow and shove it aside, and then to return it. The man stumbles, knocked into backpedaling, and nearly tripping. Surprise flashes across his face, but it quickly turns back to distaste. “If you’d spread your legs like you should have—“  
  
That’ll be quite enough of _that_ , thank you. He catches the man high toward his shoulder, knocking him sideways, and when the man stumbles and overbalances, exposing his right side, it’s enough space for a strike. One quick slash wounds him over his arm, forcing the sword out of his hand. Another in quick succession rakes him across the ribs, sending him tumbling to the ground.  
  
And _stay_ down, damn it.  
  
He sucks in a quick breath: Erik may be able to easily best him in a fight, but that doesn’t denote utter uselessness with a sword. Maybe he’s of only a little better than average ability, but a common foot soldier like this one, who’s lost in his anger, is not beyond him.  
  
That doesn’t make it any easier to look into the man’s eyes when he yanks his head up to stare at Charles.  
  
“I hope he fucks you _hard_ ,” the man spits out, clutching at his arm. One look confirms that he has no reason to reach for his sword: the tendons of his arm have been severed. “My bother is _dead_ because you ran, and I hope Lehnsherr makes you _bleed_. Your lips are pretty, and I bet you look good when you choke. I hope you _choke_. I hope he fucks you where the world can see—“  
  
He runs his sword across the man’s jugular before he can get the rest of the sentence out. It isn’t pretty, and it doesn’t feel like justice, but letting him finish his tirade wouldn’t have solved anything, and—once you walk onto a battlefield, you face death. Indulging in too much mercy during a battle—the kind that would have been required to spare this man—means potentially putting your own life at risk.  
  
Let the nightmares come later.  
  
The guilt, at least, is ever-present.  
  
How many men feel the same as this one did? Men have died on account of the war he’s fought with Erik. Wrong and right doesn’t matter much to grieving men, and to this man, it was clear what he’d expected: a bearer ought to accept, act the part society has planned out for him, and say nothing about it. A failure to do so has caused a loss of life. Therefore, the guilty party is not Erik, who was only taking his due, but rather the person who wouldn’t fall in line.  
  
Flipping his sword, Charles presses back against the rock, keeping his back to it, even as he slips around to the other side where he won’t have to stare at the man’s dead body.  
  
Once he makes it around to the other side of the rock, the killing field stretches out in front of him. It’s narrow, only a small flat space between two towering slopes, and it’s little better than a death trap. Already, it’s clogging up with fallen bodies, as more, still-animated figures scramble up the sides of the ravine, only for some of them to be cut down, and to fall, and fall, and lodge themselves back at the bottom of the slope, often on top of the bodies of their comrades.  
  
It takes an effort not to retch. It’s weakness, but…  
  
At the end of the day, he never did have a stomach for war. Piles of bodies, and grass wet with blood…  
  
Don’t think about it. Get through this. Use those feelings, but don’t connect to them. _Use_ them.  
  
Play the part and play it well, then: the disjointed soldier, lost in the trauma of shedding blood, so locked into the surge of it that, by the end of the day, his hands will be curled too tightly about the hilt of the sword to pry them free. It’s happened: he’s seen more than a few men experience it. If he were those men, it would be perfectly explainable why he appears to lose track of himself, why he fails to see that he’s being caught out, left stranded by his own forces’ retreat. No man’s land, they call it. Caught in the midst of the enemy army, with his own troops pulling back to hold the ridge, while Charles is left in the valley. An easy enough mistake to make: Armando has the command to pull the troops back, and the troops would follow that order, no questions asked, assuming only that Charles has a reason for remaining in the valley.  
  
They aren’t wrong, but it sure must look a hell of a lot like he’s made a mistake.  
  
Perfect.  
  
Or, as perfect as it can possibility be. Perfect would mean no pregnancy—no risk for himself or the baby, who, at five months along, would take damage from a blow to the stomach. Erik will know. _Erik_ won’t hit him there—but someone else _could._ Of all the things to hate Erik for: _this_ , pushing things to a point where it becomes a necessity that he risk his unborn child, lest he or she be born in a world where they’d have been better off dead—Erik’s fault, all Erik’s fault, and this is a matter that’s unforgivable. Win, lose, draw—this can’t be pardoned.  
  
With a flair for the dramatic—he’s been told on more than one occasion that he’s good at that—he sweeps his sword in a wide arc, pivoting backward to glance up toward Westchester’s side of the ravine. To an onlooker, it would be the movement of a man realizing how stranded he’s become.  
  
To Ororo, it’ll be the signal she needs.  
  
Reliable to the last, Ororo: no sooner has he sliced through the air with his sword then there’s a roll of thunder, tumbling down through the valley. Perfect. This won’t isn’t a proper storm, but the clouds roll in thickly, deadening the sunlight, and, on the heels of that, a sticky, cloying fog cascades in down over the ridges. Pea soup, some people call it. The analogy fits, from what he can see.  
  
Or rather, can’t see.  
  
But that _is_ the point.  
  
Around him, the cries of soldiers who have lost their way batter at his eardrums. It’s dangerous to be concealed this way, when one panicked onslaught could end him. All it would take is a confused soldier.  
  
Wary of that, he slinks down toward a large jut of rock, craggy, but flat toward the back, with a bit of an overhang. No one will be able to climb down on top of him. With any luck, that won’t be a problem: hopefully Genosha’s soldiers will follow the slant of the ground upward and make their way back up the ridge to Erik’s side. But, in the meantime, it’s safest to conceal his back against the rock and wait them out. Erik will find him easily enough whether he’s standing or crouching: the metal of Erik’s sword will sing to him clearly enough in both positions.  
  
Come along then, Erik….  
  
The fog is damp, and the ground clogs up with the moisture to the point where his trousers grow damp as he waits. It’s all through his lungs—a little like breathing water, but no more like drowning than any of these past few years have been. Moira’s death, Westchester’s fall, those few weeks with Erik, escape, the treaty meeting, discovering the pregnancy… Nothing is solid any longer, and if he were to die today, the greatest indicator would be the peace inherent in an ending. Living could never be so peaceful. Either way, though—death or life—this running has lasted too long.  
  
The sounds of the soldiers begin to clear away around him. Luck is so seldom on his side, but, in this case, it appears that he’s gotten what he wants: the sounds of their footfalls echo off the rocks as they scramble up the sides of the valley, clambering back from whence they came. If it didn’t promise to undo everything he’s working for, he’d almost enjoy closing his eyes and listening to it: hundreds of minds, carried by footsteps, scrambling through the fog.  
  
And then, to his right…  
  
“Charles.”  
  
Ready, then: it will be a few moments before there’s any proof of whether he’s guessed correctly as to Erik’s tactics, but, in the meantime…  
  
Driving his shoulders down against the rock, Charles propels himself upward, swaying to his feet and darting forward, down into a crouch, away from Erik’s voice. What he wouldn’t give to have his telepathy, to be able to check as to whether everything is going according to plan.  
  
“Do you really want to fight, Charles? It’s not safe for you here, with the baby.”  
  
Too wooden, too rehearsed: yes, then. Or is he imagining what he wants to hear? But, either way, he’s too far into this now to retreat from his suspicions: instead, he backs up his body, slipping further away from the rock and into the embrace of the fog. “It isn’t safe for _you_ either,” he calls back dully. “Tell me, Erik, do you remember the last time we talked?”  
  
“Of course I do.” Further away now.  
  
Charles angles off to the side again, sidestepping. His fingers twitch to his hip, skimming over the knife. “And what was it that we talked about?”  
  
A pause. And then: “Honestly, Charles, don’t be ridiculous.”  
  
“Answer the question.”  
  
The answer comes from a closer distance than the last phrase: “I’d rather discuss how you’re five months pregnant and running about a battlefield.”  
  
Running won’t do any good in the fog: he could just as easily be going in circles. And running isn’t the _point_. “I’m sure you would. I, however, would _not_.”  
  
“Charles—“  
  
He peddles backward, gulping down a breath. This is what he’s supposed to be doing, but the vulnerability of it claws at his nerves regardless, and he can’t help himself from spinning in a circle, desperate enough to check whether there’s anyone behind him.  
  
No one is there.  
  
Yet.  
  
And again: “Charles.”  
  
“Fuck off,” he snarls. But the voice is closer now. All right, though: good. They’re far enough out in the valley, and the soldiers have gone, which was the purpose of the fog. Any second now….  
  
The fog clears as quickly as it first came, blowing away on the wings of a breeze that stirs languidly across the grass, brushing it down to the ground. Ororo’s timing is impeccable. Now—right now, if he looks…  
  
And _there_.  
  
About twenty feet away, across a stretch of grass and beyond a few wayward rocks, is Erik.  
  
He looks good. Garbed in upper body armor, he’s bulkier than usual, but he has the same lean lines that he had the last time they met. Pity the same is not true for Charles. Five months pregnant is no laughing matter. Four more and there will be a baby: a tiny being that demands his attention as relentlessly as its father does, only with far more cause.  
  
Though he cuts a fine figure, Erik does look tired. His eyes are rimmed red and slightly bloodshot, and his grip on his sword—which is still sheathed, though his hand rests on the hilt—is not as relaxed as it usually is. _Hmm_ , well—that may not be exhaustion, but rather a difference of technique. Good. All the signs point to success.  
  
“Put your weapons down,” Erik tells him, his voice strange and lilting, half-coaxing, but too hard for it to be anything quite so gentle. “Just put them down and come to me, all right?” He reaches out with an open palm, beckoning.  
  
“I’ll do you the courtesy of extending the same offer: put your weapons down and get on your knees, and I won’t put you there.”  
  
Erik’s lips curl. “Do you really think—?”  
  
There’s a lull to the breeze now, but that’s no matter: the fog is gone. Tilting his head to the side, Charles glances up, first toward one ridge, then toward the other. Both armies are lined along the top. Everything that is happening in the valley below is on center stage.  
  
Once again, the urge to turn and look behind him kicks up, almost overwhelming in its intensity. But he doesn’t turn. Not this time.  
  
“I absolutely _do_ think.” Scuff one foot down into the dirt, get a good foundation for a pivot… “And that’s what you never seem to have understood. You always told me you thought I was brilliant, and maybe you _did_ think that, but it wasn’t enough for you to believe that I could outthink _you_.”  
  
The truth is never much fun to hear in situations like these—but it may be that Erik doesn’t think it’s the truth at all. It would explain why he wrinkles his nose, disdainful in his manner. “I _know_ you can outthink me: but I don’t think you can _outfight_ me.”  
  
“I agree. But I don’t _need_ to outfight you.”  
  
The expression drops off Erik’s face, replaced by a new one seconds later—and this one smacks of irritation, and anger enough to set that spark alight in Erik’s eye. That spark has always been one of the things he’s loved about Erik. All that passion. Used wrongly, yes, but Erik is so very _arresting_ : he sweeps up those around him and tangles them into his purpose. It’s the work of minutes to be caught up with him, and getting out is always much harder than falling in.  
  
“If you force a fight out of this, and the baby is harmed—“  
  
“You’ll what?” He grips the sword more tightly. “Strip me and have me flogged in a public square? It’s the classic punishment, you know, for runaway bearers.”  
  
“No.”  
  
That would be far more comforting if circumstances weren’t what they are—or what he believes them to be. “I’m not surrendering. Either walk over here and engage me—get your weapon out and _mean_ it—beat me in front of both our armies—or walk away. I’m not your lackey, Erik, I’m your _husband_ , and once-upon-a-time that didn’t mean taking orders. It was Shaw that changed that, and as much as that man wrecked your life, you bought into his theories disappointingly quickly.”  
  
“Charles…” Growled out, blatantly displeased, but at least it has Erik drawing his sword—he was foolish ever to put it away in the first place—and marching a few steps forward. He draws up halfway, still out of striking distance, but it— _he—_ is closer now. More viciously real.  
  
Charles drops his chin and cuts at Erik with his gaze. “Make a choice.”  
  
“I don’t want to fight you.”  
  
“Not so pleasant, not getting what you want, is it?” He pauses, flexing his fingers on the metal of his sword. Nothing, yet, not even a twitch. By now, logic says that Erik should have plucked that sword out of his hand. “Why won’t you tell me what we talked about when we last met, Erik?” His grip tightens further, and he smirks, because, _because_ …  
  
“You already know what we talked about.”  
  
“Certainly _I_ do. But do _you_?”  
  
And that’s enough to do it: Erik lunges forward, arching the blade over his shoulder and slicing it down with a sharp whistle of air. The strike isn’t overly quick, and it’s easy to catch, to knock aside, return with a blow of his own. Oh, if there were ever a doubt, it’s gone now. This fight, while skilled, lacks Erik’s precision. Charles catches the blows on his own sword, circling about, and occasionally getting in a hit of his own, but it isn’t the fluid half-dance that their movements had always been whenever he sparred with Erik. He’d always found himself breathless in those steps, outmatched, and driven back.  
  
He’s outmatched here too, but it’s not he same. Here, there’s the chance of victory. That never happened with Erik _before_.  
  
And always, _always_ , there was Erik’s command of metal.  
  
“Lost your powers?” he snarls over the top of crossed blades, bracing his other hand behind the first on the hilt of the sword and shoving forward, putting his weight behind it. He and Erik break apart with the screech of metal on metal ringing in the air.  
  
“Hardly,” Erik snaps, but his next swing is particularly vicious, with too much weight behind it: Charles staggers, backpedaling, only narrowly avoiding a cluster of rocks, slick with the mist. That’s the downside of a good masking mist: it leaves the landscape sodden.  
  
Worth it, though: it’s driven the armies back where he needs them to be. And, yes, there they are: in his ears there echoes a chorus of shouts, plunging down from the ridge. Impossible to hear what they’re saying from here—but he doesn’t need to hear. Anything they think they need to tell him, he probably already knows.  
  
If he can win this fight… he’ll lose on the surface, but only for a moment. And even if he loses this bout, he’ll still ultimately win—but it would be quite a treat, a final emphasis, to claim victory outright.  
  
“Not up to your usual standard, Erik.”  
  
Not at all. And Erik, while he might lash out in rage, has over the years learned to notch himself down into the swing of the fight, to channel his anger that way. Maybe at one point in time he grew sloppy when provoked—Erik once told him that used to be the case, but it’s been years since that would have been true, and Charles has never seen him fight that way.  
  
And, yet, Erik is delivering increasingly erratic strokes. They aren’t unskilled by any means, and they’d be sufficient to defeat most opponents—save for the one opponent who knows this fighting style almost as well as he knows his own. This _isn’t_ Erik’s style.  
  
But, then, that makes good sense.  
  
Charles swings again, aiming for where the weak spot will be, low and to the left. That’s where it _always_ is, in all the play-fights they ever had before, all the training—if there’s a fighting style he knows better than his own, it’s _this_ one.  
  
 _I raised you. I_ know _you._  
  
It comes, then, with all the brutality of an honest, well-worn loss: it’s born from knowing precisely where the next strike will fall, because there was always a tell—not discernable to most, but he’s seen this method of fighting _so many times_.  
  
When his opponent’s hip drops, Charles ducks low, dodging the high swing, and knocking his opponent to the side and into a stumble that can’t be fixed simply by standing back up: he’s still presented with the exposed canvas of an unguarded backside.  
  
And, _yes._  
  
Charles tucks the point of his sword snuggly into his opponent’s lower back.  
  
“Drop it.”  
  
Erik’s sword clatters to the ground.  
  
 _Erik’s_ sword.  
  
Just like that, _Charles’_ hands are empty.  
  
No reason to be surprised when the figure in front of him ripples, changing, skin and armour dissolving into scales and blue. A beautiful figure: Raven always has been stunning, statuesque and shapely, and there was never a time that he didn’t find her beautiful. Deplorable, perhaps, but never ugly.  
  
Cold metal—the same that first accompanied the order to drop weapons—taps against his neck. “Are you injured in any way?”  
  
Leave it to Erik: holding his husband at swordpoint is hardly the pinnacle of gentility, but he’s succeeds in slipping in some sort of concern as though it were.  
  
Shifting, he leans into the sword, just a little, taking in the realness of the cold bite against his skin. “Some cuts and bruises. Nothing that won’t heal quickly.”  
  
But Erik isn’t the only one concerned: in front of him, Raven blinks, lips tightening as she raises her arm. It doesn’t matter that he can’t move away: her touch drifts forward without any heed for the situation, as concerned as a sibling ought to be—it doesn’t mean anywhere near what it should anymore—and showing it in her touch, in how her fingertips brush the bottom of his chin. She must find what she’s looking for, because she relaxes, cups his face instead, and whistles a puff of breath out slowly from between her teeth. But, at the same time, her eyes jump behind Charles, focusing on Erik instead.  
  
“We’ll be going straight to the medical tent,” Erik announces tersely. “You need looking after. Five months pregnant and fighting a war… You’re _mad_.”  
  
The tip of the sword sneaks a bit higher, the flat of it patting, once, twice, against his cheek. As irritating as that is—to hell with it all, with Erik thinking he’s won so easily—it’s worse when Erik pulls back, sneaking the sword up higher. It kisses at his temple, and from there, continues on, nicking the edge of the circlet. Thankfully, braided as it is into his hair, it doesn’t come off so easily: Erik could hack the hair away, but, secure as he’s feeling in his victory, he probably doesn’t see the need.  
  
That doesn’t mean Erik is _pleased_ , and while only Raven’s expression of discontent is visible, Erik is no doubt wearing a similar one.  
  
Then let him have something more to hate: “I _am_ mad,” Charles agrees, ignoring the tug on his hair. “I’m _angry_.”  
  
As tensely as Erik is holding that sword—there’s no wobble to it whatsoever—it’s honestly a wonder that he doesn’t simply give in and start sawing the circlet out from the hair. “That makes two of us. You have risked _both_ yourself _and_ our child, and there was no need to do _any_ of it—”  
  
“No need?” At that’s it—that’s the limit. This was supposed to be a conversation, one final chance to talk Erik down—but, gods, Frost was right. Erik is beyond reason. He won’t negotiate. He won’t even _hear_. “No need, Erik? What if the child was born a bearer? I wasn’t going to have it grow up in a world where it had _this_ to look forward to.”  
  
Though he’s facing Raven, he’s zoned out past her face, gaze rolling over the dips and swells of the valley, and the dead scattered there. Is it possible to be this angry? It shouldn’t be. The burn of it ought to eat a person up, leave nothing left. If he were like this all the time, for the rest of his life—maybe then he’d be as paranoid as Erik, as fundamentally broken.  
  
And it’s not an excuse. Moira’s death, Raven’s betrayal, losing his kingdom, Erik—everything. Hasn’t he had enough reason to be bitter? Erik chose it. He _chose_ to let it consume him. Because it _has_ to be a choice. Otherwise there would never be any hope for anyone who has been wronged.  
  
And, damn it, hope is the only thing he has left.  
  
That, and a signal.  
  
“I’m telling you one last time, Erik: drop your weapon.”  
  
But all he gets is a soft, frustrated sigh. _Unreasonable_ , it says. How trite. How _expected_.  
  
“You are the most brilliant strategist I’ve ever met,” Erik says, sighing again. “Which is why I know you’re aware of the ridiculousness of that statement.”  
  
From Erik’s point of view, yes. But—Erik is not the first step of the consequences that answer triggers. For that, it’s only necessary to lift his gaze, to meet Raven’s yellow-eyed stare.  
  
Amazing, how she can radiate youth. She’s no child—no innocent girl who doesn’t understand the consequences of her actions. Or, possibly that’s it exactly. Maybe he never taught her that. Perhaps he was as overprotective as she always accused him of being, but, whether or not that’s true, she was the focus of everything personal for him, up until Erik walked into Westchester. After that there had been a war, hunting Shaw, Erik—and, in the bitter aftermath, Moira. Before all that, there was never any need for her to understand consequences, when he was there to catch her when she fell.  
  
But… he would have done the same later too. She wasn’t displaced—she wasn’t _less_. She’s his sister. Leaving for war and spending time with Erik, with the soldiers—she never became less important, despite all of that. But… take away that central focus, keep up a desire to protect her, and throw in her own fundamental distaste for a world that didn’t accept her….  
  
Was there ever any question that this would end badly?  
  
He dips his chin, blinking slowly. _Yes._  
  
Yes: there _was_ a question. And _she_ answered it. This was a choice.  
  
She chose to take that final step. Chose to leave him, to kill Moira. Whatever he did—it doesn’t make him blameless, but it doesn’t erase _her_ blame either.  
  
Knowing that—shaking with the nerve-scraping truth of it—doesn’t make it any easier to watch Raven’s knees buckle. There’s a moment of astounded surprise on her face, but it vanishes before he can catch hold of it and fix the snapshot in his mind, bowled over by the oncoming rush of unconsciousness. She goes down hard to the ground in a heap, silent and still, limbs twisted unnaturally. She’ll have a hell of a crick in her back when she wakes.  
  
Behind him, Erik’s breath hitches, and, seconds later, his hand jumps to Charles’ shoulder, holding him steady. “What did you just do?”  
  
“Nothing. All Emma Frost, I’m afraid.”  
  
“Raven has been taught shielding. Frost isn’t as strong as you are: she would have had to be chipping away at Raven’s shields for far longer than just these few minutes in order to drop Raven so quickly.” A pause, and then: “You expected this.” It isn’t a question.  
  
And so Erik finally _understands_. This was a feint all along. “Do you really think I’d be so foolish as to engage you in a fight?” There’s self-confidence, and then there’s knowing his own limitations, and taking Erik down in a fair physical fight will always be beyond him. “And I was sure you wouldn’t take any chances. A double-team was exactly the kind of thing you’d try.”  
  
“You’re forgetting one thing.”  
  
Most likely not. “Oh?”  
  
Can’t leave well enough alone, can he? Erik was never made for a graceful concession: he’s too engrained in his drama, in snatching up his fallen sword and catching it, darting his hand up off Charles’ shoulder to seize the hilt at the last second. “Nice to see _this_ again. I wouldn’t have thought you’d be keen to use it, considering how many people you think I’ve killed with it. But I suppose when sentiment gets the best of you….”  
  
“Either tell me what you think I’ve forgotten, or do us both a favor and stop your grandstanding.”  
  
Which is really a more accurate term than it should be. This late in the game, and Erik hasn’t yet learned that Charles’ attention is not his due. “I’d say your temper is due to the pregnancy, but we both know better.”  
  
“Fuck off.”  
  
Not his most eloquent rebuttal, but there are more important things to worry about. Things like—yes, right there at his belt. Erik notices, digging the tip of his sword more firmly into flesh and cloth, but Erik isn’t about to run him through. Injure him, maybe, if it comes down to a choice between that and letting him run again, but they aren’t quite at that point.  
  
“Hands where I can see them, Charles.”  
  
Well, all right. There’s no particular reason not to listen to that command, not when he already has his hand around the ceramic knife. How nice, to have his and Erik’s desires finally coincide.  
  
Funny, but Erik doesn’t seem overly pleased.  
  
“Drop the knife,” Erik orders. If he were any more put-upon, he’d probably be well on his way to giving a lecture. No doubt he’s rolling his eyes too.  
  
“You really don’t want me to do that. Also, you still haven’t told me what I’ve forgotten.”  
  
A heavy sigh. “Honestly, isn’t it obvious?” Erik clucks his tongue, and there’s the sharp sound of metal being sheathed. One sword remains at Charles’ back, but Erik must have put the other away, because his newly-freed hand sneaks up to curl around the base of Charles’ neck, engulfing any skin it can reach. But the touch is affectionate, too: Erik strokes a finger up and down, nudging away a bit of the dampness that’s set in there and turned the skin clammy. “You’ve knocked Raven out, but you’ll need to engage me in a fight regardless, Charles. Shoddy planning, that… which makes me think you’re not yet out of tricks.”  
  
Tricks? Is that what they’re calling it nowadays? Fitting enough: turning tricks, and hasn’t he played the whore for long enough? It’s long past time for that to end. Those days of having no bargaining chip beyond that of his body….  
  
“You did always know me best, _Darling_.” Or possibly Erik never knew him at all.  
  
Though Erik huffs out another breath, it’s sharper this time, imitating nonchalance, but the tiny edge there—the hint of apprehension—smothers the effect. “I don’t have time for this: drop the weapon, Charles.”  
  
“I’ve already told you: you _really_ don’t want me to do that.”  
  
The muted squish of the grass is all the warning he gets before Erik pushes straight up against his back, wrapping his arm around Charles’ front, resting his hand over the bulge of his stomach. Like a neat little family—and it _could_ be. That’s the worst part. There’s a rush of comfort at being held like this, at having Erik so close, warm and firm against his back. Despite himself, he tips his head back and notches the curve of his skull in the cradle of Erik’s shoulder.  
  
As enticing as that is… But Erik enjoys it too. He curves his palm, fitting it to the bulge under his fingers; he hums quietly, clearly pleased.  
  
“And why don’t I want you to drop it?” Erik murmurs, nuzzling against Charles’ ear. What the troops must be thinking of this….  
  
“Because: one signal, Erik, and I’ll give new meaning to the term ‘scorched earth.’”  
  
Erik’s body stiffens. “Excuse me?” But there’s no ignoring that he’s taking the threat seriously. Erik may not be a perfect husband, but this business of lifting a sword up and holding it to Charles’ throat is certainly new. Oh, but—not quite as threatening as it seemed at first go. He has the flat side parallel to Charles’ throat, meant more to cage than to cut: any lung forward will catch the flat of the sword and choke him, hold him steady, but it won’t cut his throat.  
  
“The dagger is explosive. Frost and I have a variety of agreed-upon signals. If I use any of them, she’ll detonate the explosive, and you; me; Raven; and, yes, the baby, will be nothing more than stains on the ground.”  
  
 _Do I have your attention now?_ If this doesn’t make Erik listen, nothing will. No need to worry for that, thankfully: Erik’s sword clatters to the ground, and he jerks back—but not long enough for comfort. He’s back seconds later, spinning Charles around, hands clasped tight to his shoulders.  
  
Well. Who knew it was possible for a man to go so very pale? That’s not a good look on Erik, this pasty, sickly pallor. “You’d kill the baby?”  
  
No worry for himself or for Raven, and he’s already well-versed in the idea that Charles would kill himself. Such are the virtues of easing into these things. This, though—there’s no easing into _this_ , not for someone holding the potential explosion. “The only alternative, Erik, is not an alternative at all. Do not _ever_ think that I _wanted_ to do this.”  
  
There’s a chill out here, with the wind sweeping down from the ridges, and the fog leaving behind its damp. Though, there are many other ways to explain why he’s begun to shiver—and it’s possibly to Erik’s credit that, even now, he’s obviously concerned, raking his eyes up and down and taking in the tiny shakes. “Don’t _do_ this.”  
  
That’s begging.  
  
Erik is _begging._  
  
Was this how _he_ sounded, this strung out and lost? When Erik forced him, when Erik made him beg—and now _Erik_ wants mercy? No. Impossible. But Erik—there’s the pull to give that mercy anyway, to forgive, because this is _Erik_. Love, love, love, but love doesn’t avoid justice, and it most definitely does not wipe away anger. Slow to anger, maybe, but when it’s justified, it doesn’t turn away—or, rather, it _can’t._  
  
They’re reached this point, and there’s no going back.  
  
 _Erik_ has made it that way.  
  
“Get on your knees.”  
  
And Erik _does._ Slowly, grudgingly, but he goes.  
  
“Put this on.” Of all the cruel things, dragging the suppression collar out of his pocket is possibly the most brutal. For Erik, for himself—it digs down into him and scoops out every ounce of feeling, filling in the cavity with acid emotion.  
  
The collar is such a small thing. Metal, but that hardly matters when it will nullify Erik’s powers. Like Charles’ circlet, it’s a twist of thin wire, bendable, collapsible—so bloody innocuous that it was able to fit in his pocket. Only this, and it can bind Erik’s powers.  
  
Never in his life would Erik be capable of following that direction without examining every other possibility. There’s always the chance he’ll find one, though, and it’s better to cut him off before he has the opportunity. But… it’s oddly devoid of satisfaction, watching Erik gingerly bend and pluck the mess of wire off the ground where it’s been tossed, pinching it between thumb and forefinger with every indication that the very existence of the contraption is burning him from the inside out. That would explain the agony on his face: the clenched jaw and pursed lips, his stuttering breath—but he won’t take his eyes off the thing in his hand.  
  
Not until he chooses to look at Charles.  
  
“Well played, _Schatz_ ,” he says, tight-lipped and tense.  
  
Well played indeed.  
  
All these months, and it ends like this, with Erik thumbing open the clasp of the collar, fitting it around his own neck, and clicking it closed.  
  
Afterwards, Charles will never exactly be able to recall the expression on Erik’s face. If he drew up the memory, he could relive it, but, even years later, he will always end up avoiding it with the fastidiousness of someone who is too guilty to bask in his own victory.  
  
For now, he drinks in the sight of Erik sucking in air, stumbling, his hands thumping down to the ground to brace in front of him, holding him steady as best they can when his arms are shaking so dreadfully.  
  
“Hands behind your back.”  
  
“Charles—“ He can snarl if he likes, but it won’t do much, nor will the venomous glare he tosses upward once he’s curtailed the shaking and is able to crane his neck properly.  
  
“I don’t want to make this a production. Do as I say, and I can move along to a hospital where they can check over both me and the baby.”  
  
As potentially dirty as it is to use the baby and his own health to prompt Erik into compliance, effectiveness wins the day. This kind of stress is the sort of thing every pregnant bearer is warned about, and as irritating as that is, his own shaking has reached a ridiculous level. What a pair he and Erik are, shaking for completely different reasons, but both tormented by this mess.  
  
Even down on his knees, Erik exudes power in the regal tilt of his jaw, and most of all in the perfect posture of his back when he straightens up, looking Charles’ straight in the eye. A coward his husband is not—and he’s far too familiar with embarrassment to allow himself to be shamed by being put in a suppression collar. Furious, but not shamed.  
  
Not outwardly.  
  
Erik was never meant to be like this, down on his knees. He’s a proud man, and one meant to own that pride—but every man can fall, and any man who has done what Erik has done _should_ fall. But at Charles’ hand? It doesn’t feel right. It doesn’t feel _good_. Of all the ways that Erik has done him wrong, this may be the greatest: pushing him to a place where this became necessary.  
  
Apology shouldn’t be required, but it rolls to the front of his mouth as he picks his way through the wet grass and brings himself around behind Erik. One quick movement, and he closes his fingers around Erik’s wrists, pressing them together in one hand—Erik’s pulse is rabbit-quick against his fingers—and drawing a few zip ties out of his pocket. It’s a crude method, but an effective one. Effective enough that, when he loops them around Erik’s wrists and pulls them snug, he can’t contain his sharp burst of air at the sight: Erik, bound. Restrained, like he’s done to so many others.  
  
It’s justice. And it’s awful.  
  
“Get up.”  
  
Though he chuckles bitterly, Erik gets one knee up, pressing his foot to the ground, and then, leaning forward on that, he teeters upward to a standing position. “Not wasting any time, are you?”  
  
“I don’t _have_ time to waste.”  
  
“I’d say you have all the time in the world now, actually. Tell me: what do you plan to do? Have me executed?”  
  
It would be the logical conclusion. Erik is dangerous. Were he to escape, everything could collapse back down into chaos. But… were he to die, the exact same thing could happen. As it is, a good two thirds of the world is going to be left leaderless—or led by whomever Erik appointed to rule while he’s indisposed—while he has Erik prisoner. Power vacuums are dangerous things. Yet, killing Erik _would_ solve a very great problem: it would break the bond.  
  
“No.” Regardless of the benefits, that will never be an option. Love, bitterness—it doesn’t matter. Erik was his friend first, his lover second, and now his husband, the father of his child—and he is more than all those things combined. Killing him was never an option.  
  
Erik glances over his shoulder at him. “What, then?”  
  
“I intend to bargain with you.”  
  
With his lips peeled back away from his teeth, Erik barks out a laugh. “Bargain? Darling, you’ve no need. You’ve _won_.”  
  
For every time that Erik has pressed a hand to _his_ back and moved him forward, Charles may now bend that movement to his own use: it’s his turn to urge Erik forward, to press him into lurching along over the uneven ground, feet catching on the dips and rises, as they move toward Westchester’s ridge. The noise from there—it’s incoherent, but it rolls down and swirls at the bottom of the valley. “Yes. And what I want now is _peace_. Unless we can come to an accord, I’ll never have that.” He pauses, slipping the knife back onto his belt. No need of it now. “I didn’t win this war to own you, Erik: I did it to force you to _listen_. _Honestly_ listen, in a way that will mean consideration, and concessions.” Not just hearing and dismissing. Erik can probably parrot any of their arguments, but he hasn’t bothered to really _think_ through a word of it.  
  
He no longer has the luxury to be that dismissive.  
  
“You think you can change the world this easily?”  
  
One good shove to Erik’s back, a fraction harder than it needs to be. Doesn’t matter much: Erik is wearing a lined shirt, and the shift of metal is blatant enough to render the motion pointless. But… it’s satisfying, seeing him stumble. Petty? Perhaps. But who in his right mind would possibly argue that this hasn’t been earned?  
  
“You think _this_ has been easy?”  
  
Easy would have been an amicable parting. Easy would have been a gradual reveal, where the world accepted him. Easy is _not_ this mess of death.  
  
But Erik merely huffs, rolling his shoulders as best he can with his arms bound. Bloody unfair that, even like this, he looks good: handsome, with a shirt woven through with metal, allowing him to retain the fluidity of his movement and motion. Far, _far_ too handsome when his hair is damp with sweat, and that shouldn’t be appealing, but it is: there’s a draw to his ruggedness, to the roughness of his look, much like the hint of stubble that’s popping up on his chin and upper lip. He isn’t polished, and he doesn’t need to be.  
  
“What will you do, Charles? They’ll overthrow you the moment things settle.”  
  
Another step, and another—in more ways than one. That will be his life now. One day at a time. “They might. But, bearer or not, I’m damn good at what I do: if they want to overthrow me, they’ll need to beat me first, and at my own game.”  
  
“ _I_ did.”  
  
Stretching his arm out, he flicks Erik’s bound wrists. “ _Did_ you?”  
  
A chuckle. “Fair point. But… you can’t defeat a whole worldview, Charles. You can’t defeat the whole _world_.”  
  
“I don’t have to.”  
  
“Oh?”  
  
“That’s what _you_ are for.”  
  
Tied and captive, and Erik still can’t quite shed his superiority. That should say something about how deeply ingrained those beliefs are. Like most of this world—but most of the world doesn’t have the opportunity to look over its shoulder, to toss out a wry little smile, peeling back lips as easy as orange peels. “What, you think I’ll serve _you_? It’s a nice thought, Love, but not a practical one.”  
  
They’ve reached the point now where the ground is beginning to rise, approaching the slope of the ridge. It’s a steep incline, and the rocks increase on the way up: it’s a dangerous ascent or descent for an army, when so many men trample over one space, but with only himself and Erik it isn’t so bad: they pick the choicest bits of ground, steadying their feet on convenient rocks, and Charles does the courtesy of lodging his hand under Erik’s elbow, keeping him steady.   
  
“I don’t need you to serve me,” he answers as they begin their way up. “I only need you not to stop me.”  
  
“I suppose that depends on what I’m theoretically stopping you from _doing_.”  
  
“Nothing, anymore.” He digs his thumb into the indent of Erik’s elbow. “Keep walking.”  
  
Erik flaps his arm out, shaking Charles’ hold away. Fine. If he’d like to walk without help, and with his balance skewed, he’s more than welcome to do that. If he falls, he won’t be doing himself any favors: his own army has already seen him outmaneuvered, and it wouldn’t do to have them see what their general looks like rolling down a ridge.  
  
Now there’s a thought.  
  
“You know, I never doubted that you could lead an army—I’ve seen you do it—but I suppose I never imagined what it would be like to see you set terms once you’d won.”  
  
“I haven’t _told_ you my terms yet.” The incline is enough that, by now, it takes a good deal of breath to keep going. But he and Erik are both in good shape, and the burn in the calf muscles is oddly purifying—burning out the excess anger.  
  
Erik is breathing hard as well, and the two of them fall silent as the climb steepens more. Not far now, only up over the rise, and the last outcroppings of rock. It’s a ridiculous battleground, and one that would never have worked ordinarily. No sane man would have chosen it.  
  
But sanity has long since stopped being the definition of anything between himself and Erik.  
  
With an opponent that knows nearly everything about him, surprise had been the greatest advantage. Unconventionality won the day.  
  
That, and Emma Frost, who is perched just over the lip of the ridge, hands on her hips, and staring impassively down at the both of them as they break over the crest, tottering up onto flat ground and straightening up in front of her.  
  
For a woman who has recently helped win a battle, there’s precious little elation on her face. Though, _some_ , or what passes for it in her world. Her expression is as poised as ever, but her smirk is sharpened, and she examines Erik with razor concern: it’s almost physically possible to watch her shave back his layers and peer down into the heart of the matter. It helps that she knows details, but the way she locks onto him, the corners of her lips tightening into jagged points, suggests she’d drag the information out whether or not she’d been told what to expect. She may not be able to use her telepathy on him, but she doesn’t _need_ to.  
  
A few feet behind her, Ororo tucks her arms behind her back, straightening her posture, and—bless her, she’s always been the best of them all: her stare is all for Charles, and, unlike Frost’s, it’s warmed, and he can feel himself sinking into it, allowing her concern to soothe over the little nicks in his emotions.  
  
“You know, Lehnsherr,” Frost begins casually, tilting her head a few inches to the side. The undiluted satisfaction radiating off her might just poison them all—or possibly infuse the camp with the sense of a job well done. “If it had been _me_ , you’d still be on your knees.”  
  
Collared and restrained, anyone else would have a perception of reality strong enough to beat them into backing down. Not Erik—and that is nothing resembling a surprise. If anything, he tips his chin back a bit further, glaring contemptuously down his nose at Frost. As perfectly pristine as she is, there’s no chance that he’s smelling something unfavorable—but he sure as hell looks as though he is.  
  
“Are all your military generals bearers?” he asks, glancing in the direction of the rest of the army where they’re perched a stones throw on either side of this little gathering. Every eye is fixed on Erik—no one is making any kind of effort to pretend otherwise. And, above it all, there’s a hiss of whispering, growing louder as it spreads through the ranks.  
  
But Emma only smiles sweetly, a little like a poisoned piece of candy.  
  
“And what about you?” she asks, sauntering toward Erik. She doesn’t have far to go. It—this shouldn’t be—she really shouldn’t be up so close to Erik, inches from his face—but—stupid, to think being that close means intimacy, near kissing. Stupider still to harbor jealousy at the prospect. “You think we’re ruled by our emotions? Weak? Is that it?”  
  
“I wouldn’t insult Charles by calling him weak. But _you_ —“ Erik’s smile turns cruel, and he leans in, placing him a mere twitch away from her mouth. This, though—nothing about this, about what Erik is radiating—there’s no sexual spark, unless foreplay counts as digging a dagger into someone’s ribs. Because Erik very much gives off the sense that he would like to do exactly that. “ _You_ , Frost, are not a weak. You’re something far worse. You’re the type of person who sends others to do your work _for_ you. You’re a _coward._ ”  
  
Frost leans back and—offering her back to Erik would, under other circumstances, be deadly. Lucky for her that this time he’s restrained. And she doesn’t stay that way for long, but quickly drops her weight, rotating back around in a silky glide of hip. “You think I hid up here while your husband went down to do my dirty work?”  
  
“I think I’d like to see you _dead_ ,” Erik snarls in the first real explosion of rage that he’s shown. And—gods, the way his eyes flash, and he smacks his jaws together, biting out the words.  
  
Frost may be perfectly happy to take credit—to have Erik hate her—but there’s no reason to needlessly put a target on her back. Erik may have the opportunity later to do something about it. “I planned this, Erik,” he says, stepping forward and laying a hand on Erik’s chest, nudging him back. It takes the full force of his weight, propping his heft into the movement—and Erik gladly holds the weight, darting his gaze away from Frost.  
  
Though, not for long: “He did,” she agrees. “He planned everything you see, down to the explosive in the knife. And how does that make you feel, Lehnsherr, to know that you made your husband desperate enough to sacrifice both himself and his unborn child? _Your_ child.”  
  
No, that’s not— _no_. They won’t go down the path that leads toward. There’s no reason. It was a terrible decision, and the kind that will rip his nights apart for years to come. If he’d thought he couldn’t sleep before… it will be nothing compared to this. Once the child is born, and he has to look at it, knowing—but it was necessary. Agonizing and necessary, and she’s torturing him as much as she’s torturing Erik by bringing it up.  
  
“Damn you to hell!”  
  
And that’s it—Erik lunges forward, throwing himself against Charles’ weight. He can’t break through, not without his arms, but it’s close, and it hurts, more from knowing why. From knowing that Erik—he isn’t fully without justification. The baby, and his husband—it was a twisted, twisted decision and situation. Frost is cruel to use it.  
  
Ororo must agree, or else she sees the situation escalating. Whatever the reason, she inserts herself into the space in between and pushes Frost back, snapping something to her under her breath. Good of her—but, then, Ororo is really the only one Frost is particularly inclined to listen to.  
  
Though, evidentially not today.  
  
Today, Frost lets herself be moved, by she keeps up the same vicious smile, locking eyes with Erik and goading, words clearly an addendum to the real taunt that hangs on her expression. “You ought to be thanking me,” she snips, and, once Ororo has let go of her—hovering nearby in case it’s not enough—Frost sweeps a stray piece of hair off her forehead and settles herself down to feed off Erik’s reaction.  
  
“Thanking you,” Erik repeats dully. One would think he doesn’t care—but his heart is hammering madly, brutal enough that it’s noticeable through his armor, pounding up against Charles’ palm. “I’d thank you to take a walk over the edge of that ridge right there—“ He jerks his head toward the valley, “but, other than that, I can’t imagine what else could possibly induce me to _thank you_.”  
  
But Frost isn’t cowed: she throws her head back and laughs, delighted and harsh, and shifts her hips, cocking them to one side. That must eat at Erik, seeing her effect a casual pose when he’s so riled. “If it weren’t for me, Lehnsherr, your husband really would have run the risk of blowing himself up. He was absolutely prepared to do it if he had to—“  
  
“Frost—“ If she keeps talking, Erik may throw himself at her with absolutely no heed to the consequences. Nothing will be accomplished, and— _this was never the plan._  
  
But Frost just shoots him a coy little smile, fluttering—oh, gods, she just fluttered her eyelashes at him. No question why she did it: Erik is positively scarlet. Forget the knife: Erik himself looks to be more than enough of a time bomb to be getting on with.  
  
“Oh, Charles.” So sweet—it’s a wonder the words don’t stick to her teeth. Ororo must feel it too: she flinches, and she probably would have honest-to-gods rolled her eyes if she hadn’t caught herself, pulling it back down into a sternness that is blatantly forced. “Lehnsherr and I don’t agree on much, but I think we might actually have found someone common ground on this: you, Sugar, are _painfully_ naïve at times.” She saunters forward a few steps, and, once close enough, she curls her fingers around his arm, squeezing lightly. Erik is nearly quivering with rage, and it’s uniquely strange, experiencing Erik’s furious buzz in one hand and Frosts fingers on his other arm. “Do you _really_ think I would have let you walk down there with explosives? You die, Sweetie, and nothing will change. If you and your husband were scattered in bits in a valley, someone just like Lehnsherr—or possibly worse—would come to power. I hate to say it, but we _need_ you. And, if we couldn’t have _you_ , then it was better to let Lehnsherr live. Better the devil you know than the one you don’t.”  
  
Leave it to Frost to make that sound worse than having teeth pulled.  
  
“The knife—“ Letting go of Erik, he drops his hand down to his waist and tugs the knife free.  
  
“Is exactly that,” she finishes for him, nodding. “A knife. _Just_ a knife.”  
  
She—what she’s done—  
  
She fucking _played_ him, zeroed in on the area where he’d been too consumed with anxiety to notice, and she _used_ that. He may have played Erik, but Emma Frost played _him_. Did Ororo…?  
  
He tips his head in her direction. There’s no reason to ask out loud. As soon as Ororo meets his eyes, there’s no doubt that she knows the question: it’s written on her face. “Yes,” she admits quietly, dropping her chin and tugging at her belt, resettling it, fixing it—but it’s no better than a nervous fidget. Hello, guilt. _Is_ it guilt? She might be ashamed, or she might be sparing him from having to look her in the eye—and that _is_ a mercy, considering how brightly his thoughts must be shinning in his eyes. “But not until after you’d gone down the ridge. I didn’t know until then.”  
  
“And if I’d been captured?!”  
  
It would have been the same as it had been, day after day after day, back in that nursery with the walls closing in, and that bed that taunted him and hollowed out a space inside his chest each time he caught sight of it. The baby—the baby would have been raised by Erik, and—being back under Erik’s thumb, this time it truly would have been a slippery slope down to madness. Emma, though—Emma and Ororo would both know that. They were worked over by Shaw worse than Erik ever thought of doing to _him_. If anyone understands that kind of captivity, it’s those two. Or, somewhat: they wouldn’t understand how it can almost be worse to throw love into the mix. Erik loves him. And… it makes it worse, makes it poisonous, when what ought to be love is tainted.  
  
“It’s why you asked me, isn’t it?” The words rasp worse than chalk on his tongue, and a few more seconds and he’ll be choking: but if they won’t give him an answer, he’ll make demands.  
  
Ororo meets his eye again, though, radiating guilt. That’s better than Frost, who, gods forbid she had any sort of human emotion—Shaw must have fucked it out of her, must have, must—she stares impassively. The amusement is gone, thankfully.  
  
“Is that why you asked me if I could handle a recapture?”  
  
Fuck. Just… fuck.  
  
It’s too much. All of this, and it’s not that this is worse than anything else, but he’s been wrung so tight: this was supposed to be pure. How did he miss this? He should be better—should have known not to let his guard down, should have _known_ that Frost would target the one blind spot, the one thing he couldn’t bear to analyze too closely because it already hurt too much. She took that, and she played him, not like Erik, but….  
  
“Charles?”  
  
Erik should be closer than that, when he’s touching—that _is_ Erik’s shoulder, bumping his own, isn’t it? Why is his voice so thready, so far away—?  
  
So… blurred, and fuzzy, where the grass is rushing up to meet him.  
  
Gravity knocks out the back of his legs, and he crashes down to his knees, digging—his skin is squishy under his fingers, giving in when it rips at his temples with his nails. No memories, no more thoughts: he’ll claw them out, dig down into his brain until this stops hurting so terribly much.  
  
Stop. _Thinking_.  
  
“Charles!”  
  
 _Get off, Erik, get off._ “Get off, get off—“ With the warmth of a wedding night, Erik’s body heat, and how he’d felt when he’d held Charles down, and he and Emma had worked together, prying open his mind. They both do this, manipulate him. They’ll do it again. They’ll—  
  
If he isn’t aware of his blind spots. How could he have been so _stupid?_  
  
Why does it matter? If she—she might have just _saved his life_ —but—  
  
And she held his mind open, dug those memories out—  
  
Something sharp and hard smashes across his face. The world shatters into shards of color and blurred perception, but when he snaps his neck back up, the pieces clatter into place and the world clicks back to where it should be. Real. Defined. Here, on the top of a ridge, with his army watching him have a flashback. Here, on his knees, Erik sprawled on the ground a few feet away on his back, sporting a blooming red mark to his face, and Frost—Frost is here, in front of him, with Ororo beside her.  
  
“Xavier,” Ororo breathes out, tentatively hovering her hand in the air between them. When he doesn’t explode into a paroxysm of memory, she cups her hand to his cheek, hesitantly starting up a gentle stroking, pushing away the wetness that’s gathered there in trails. “Are you all right?”  
  
“I don’t—I don’t know what happened.” This is hardly the worst experience of the last five years. Why is he breaking _now_?  
  
It’s over. _Because_ it’s over. Or because it feels like it, and because—because—  
  
Even when winning, it’s still a matter of losing choice. Frost may be on his side, but he’d thought she’d understand, that she wouldn’t do something like this to him if she didn’t have to. It’s such a little thing—and she might have saved his life.  
  
Be thankful, like he should be thankful to Erik for loving him, for any of the little kindnesses he gave, for those things that were good, for—  
  
It isn’t the _same_. What Frost did isn’t the same. But why can’t he breathe? Why does it _feel_ the same? It’s the memories, the associations, and they’re warping—  
  
Fuck it. It doesn’t matter. It’s _there._ Those thoughts are there, and they need to be sawed away. Fair or not, being powerless—it can’t happen again. Not again. Never again.  
  
“You’re a cold bitch.” Said low and vicious, and it feels perfect on his tongue.  
  
Her eyes narrow. “I saved your life.”  
  
“Maybe. But it was _my_ choice to make.”  
  
She scoffs. “After everything Lehnsherr has done, _this_ is what you’re going to take issue with?”  
  
It doesn’t have to be logical—of course it _does_ —but she should have known what this meant. “No. I’m taking issue with _all_ of it.” Not Ororo, it’s more difficult to feel angry with _Ororo_. She never held his mind open, never—it’s just different. Just. Different. And she didn’t know about the knife until after. But _Frost_ … “Get out of my sight. I don’t want to look at you right now.”  
  
Can’t handle seeing her is more like it, but that sounds so unforgivably weak. Already he’s down on his knees. Though, that’s easy enough to fix, planting one foot down and shoving upward, wavering unsteadily, but gaining the ground eventually, more solidly after Frost turns in burst of fuming rage and stalks away, slicing through the ranks of men with no effort. Let her stew in her tent if she likes, so long as she’s out of sight.  
  
“Why are you on the ground?”  
  
Erik stares up at him as though he’s lost his mind. It must be nice to live in a world where flashbacks are inexplicable, with no logical backing. Erik can’t possibly comprehend what just occurred—not when he’s so set on believing that nothing was wrong in the first place.  
  
“Emma backhanded him,” Ororo offers quietly from off to the side. “Right before she hit you too.”  
  
Well, good. Hitting Erik: that’s one public service that she’s offered. But—no, that isn’t fair either. That isn’t—how far does this path extend downward? Hitting Erik, enjoying that sort of thing—even Erik never enjoyed physical confrontation between them.  
  
Becoming to Erik what Erik has been to him would be the worst of all.  
  
Out of the question. Reprehensible.  
  
So: deep breath, and take a step back, catch Ororo’s eye, and: “I’ll need you to see him escorted back to Westchester.”  
  
Cowardly? Possibly. But it’s the best option until he can gain back control and approach this with rationality. Erik is… his prisoner, and that was always the plan, but it’s becoming painfully clear that perhaps that should have been thought through to a far greater degree. This was supposed to be turnabout, but being in the position to dispense justice—what’s justice, and what’s revenge?”  
  
Anyone else would look askance at him, possibly question his sanity or commitment, but Ororo only nods solemnly and takes in Erik’s movement as he gets to his feet, rolling his shoulders as best he can. She isn’t cruel; she isn’t sympathetic. Whatever she is, it’s becoming increasingly possible that she’s reached a place that he hasn’t yet, where she can look at a person who has perpetuated Shaw’s society without losing herself to bitterness. But… if it were Shaw in front of her, could she do the same? It isn’t fair to judge. And there’s no reason for it: she’s as damaged as he is, and she’s entitled to her own methods of healing. Whatever peace she can find—she’s owed it.  
  
“Charles. Are you all right?”  
  
Ever-concerned, Erik is. Charles turns away, squeezing his eyes shut and breathing in through his nose. That’s genuine concern. If Erik were cruel, if he were like Shaw—  
  
Don’t follow that line of reasoning.  
  
“We’ll talk later, Erik.”  
  
“The hell we will! Charles, you’re shaking. You—“  
  
“Then that’s something for a doctor to worry about, and I’ve already said I’ll go to the medical tent.” Turning back around, he nods to Ororo, who’s moved forward to take Erik by the elbow. “Thank you, Ororo. I’ll meet up with you later.”  
  
Thank the gods for her. She doesn’t push, and she gives him the best privacy she can, turning her attention to Erik, and tugging him forward when he doesn’t fall immediately into step. Nor will he. He snaps out a curse at her, trying to tug away, but with his hands bound he doesn’t succeed in much more than dragging her a few inches, and that’s quickly cut off when Alex and Armando—had they been this nearby the whole time?—hurry forward from the edge of the crowd and clamp down on his arms, forcibly hauling him away.  
  
 Erik does at least have the good grace to concede defeat after a few steps and begin moving under his own free will. He’s wound so tight that he’s liable to snap a few muscles, and his gate is stilted and wooden-legged, but once Charles moves off in Sean’s direction and out of Erik’s direct orbit, Erik goes more easily.  
  
The fight between them isn’t over. Anything but. That’s clear enough, but… He nudges the edge of his stomach with the tip of his elbow, forcibly pushing those thoughts aside. To anyone looking on, it would seem accidental. His stomach isn’t overly large yet, and under the military dress it’s less noticeable, but a keen eye would pick it out. A few more months, and there will be absolutely no denying exactly what’s causing his weight gain.  
  
“We’ll need to collect the dead,” he says as he draws up next to Piotr Rasputin, Alex’s second-in-command. He’s young but talented, and in a few years he’ll be leading a battalion of his own. For now he’s more than competent enough to oversee this task in Alex’s absence. Soft-hearted too, or enough that he can be trusted to do this with dignity.  
  
“Yes, Sir.”  
  
“All right.”  
  
Changing direction, he ignores the eyes of his soldiers—after what they’ve seen, it’s perfectly understandable that they’re gawking, wondering if their king has gone mad—and moves around the edge of the crowd, meeting Sean’s eyes. Though he’s stuck in the midst of a group of his men, Sean quickly disengages himself and pushes past, out toward the edge of the ridge to meet Charles.  
  
“Sir?”  
  
Sean is a bit worse for the wear: there’s a pretty nasty cut over the top of his eyebrow, and there’s blood at the corner of his lips: a scream that can produce a supersonic frequency is all well and good, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t tear at his throat if he’s used it too enthusiastically or for too long a period.  
  
“I need you to select a messenger to send to General Lehnsherr’s second-in-command.” There’s no point in calling Erik by his surname when everyone knows at this point that they’re married, but damn it if he’s going to call him “king”—and a plain “Erik” would be worse. The great pitfall at the moment is familiarity. This needs to be completed, and it needs to be done well, lest loose ends unravel and cause greater problems down the road. “I believe Logan Howlett holds that position, though I may be mistaken. But, whoever it is, they’ll need to send an envoy to be present at treaty meetings. It’ll be no good if I make a treaty with General Lehnsherr if there’s no one there to report on the result.”  
  
Leave it to Sean to have a scrap of humor in the midst of a battlefield: the right side of his mouth quirks, and he huffs to himself. “Yes, Sir. Though I doubt Lehnsherr will feel the same.”  
  
Undoubtedly not. “I’m not making a treaty for the fun of it, Sean.” But he—goodness, but this half-grin feels strange on his face. His lips must be a bit rusty. “Witnesses make it a damn sight harder to renege. If he agrees to something, I’m going to hold him to it, and I’m going to make sure the world knows exactly _what_ I’m holding him _to_.”  
  
Sean nods, and, better than that, he relaxes back into a loose, easy stance, crossing his arms and tapping one finger against the opposite elbow. “I’ll get right on sending that message, Sir. Although, can’t wait to see Lehnsherr’s face when you try to _bargain_ with him.”  
  
Correction: Sean can’t wait to see Erik’s face when he realizes that Charles has the kind of leverage that will force Erik to _engage_ in a bargain. By this point, he and Erik have bargained and haggled over many things, a thousand little freedoms, but, until now, Erik has always had the opportunity to walk away if he doesn’t like what’s being offered.  
  
Not this time.  
  
“With any luck, we can fix this mess.”  
  
Seeing Sean return that suggestion with _hope_ is possibly the best reward imaginable. Watching him nod, tilt his head to stare over toward Erik’s troops… and _smile_ —it’s shakes something loose in his chest, and for the first time since the confrontation with Frost, he truly exhales.  
  
“You’ll find a way, Sir,” Sean tells him, and the confidence in his voice is stunning. It’s certainly humbling. “And we’re behind you. The army, anyway. Might take a while to get everyone to accept a bearer on the throne, but an overthrow sure as hell won’t come from within the military.”  
  
“I don’t pretend it’ll be easy.” But… there may be a pending solution to the problem of those who can’t abide a bearer on the throne. If they can’t accept his rule, they’re always welcome to leave, migrate to a place where things are more… traditional, as it stands.  
  
But the feasibility of that will depend very much on Erik. For now, it remains to be seen.  
  
Sean shrugs. “Sure. But we’ll get there.”  
  
“I do hope so.”  
  
“Keep on hoping, Sir. It’s the only way we’re gonna change anything.”  
  
Hope: it’s a decidedly abstract concept, as it manifests inside of himself. The time with Erik didn’t so much kill his hope as it did redefine it and lock it down. The prospect of indefinitely being what he’d been to Erik was intolerable, but there had always been the promise of escape. Days, months, years—but it hadn’t been definitively lost.  
  
Maybe, with time, it would have been.  
  
But it wasn’t. It _wasn’t._  
  
“I’ll leave you to see to communications.” Dipping his head toward Sean, he claps him on the shoulder and heads off toward the rest of the troops.  
  
Despite what Sean says, not all of them will want him. There will be factions that will want to see him off the throne. But, looking at them now, there’s surprisingly few stares that hold hostility. There are a fair bunch that are colored by uncertainty, but uncertainty can be handled, doused out by competency, and so long as those who aren’t quite sure are paired with those willing to accept him, things will stay steady. His commanders are loyal.  
  
The army, at least, will see him upon the throne.  
  
The people, as Sean says, may be another matter.  
  
And so: negotiations with Erik. There _must_ be an option for those who won’t live under a bearer, lest they stay in Westchester and organize an overthrow. If Erik agrees—will work with him—things might be solved. This isn’t impossible.  
  
The troops part for him as he steps into their midst. At first, it’s a quiet, measured movement, with every stare fixed upon him, and the soldiers silently stepping back as he passes. But, as he moves deeper into their midst, back toward the camp, one reaches out—he’s a young man, no particular distinguishing features, and that might be the importance of it, that he could be _anyone_. He pats Charles on the back, tips his chin back, and… salutes. Simple, efficient, but with a deep, respectful smile that reaches his eyes and lights of up face. “Sir.”  
  
Someone else does the same. Then another, and another—and there’s too many of them for them all to reach out and pat him on the back, but all along down the line, the soldiers snap to attention. There are a handful who don’t, who scowl and turn away, and not every man who does salute effects quite the same enthusiasm as the first, but, still, the majority _do_.  
  
They salute him as he walks, shoulders back, sweeping his eyes back and forth over the ranks. This is Westchester. This is his _home_ , and his home, by and large—his home…  
  
His home _wants_ him.


	35. Chapter 35

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay on this. Life has been insane these last two weeks, but the good news is that it should soon be slowing down.

Logan sends his answer back that evening: negotiations, tomorrow night, to be held in the palace, under a flag of truce. Erik will negotiate, and Logan will dispatch men to convey the answer back to the troops. Really, it says a great deal that Logan trusts the offer of safe passage: most men would show at least some degree of suspicion, sending their representatives into an enemy’s stronghold.  
  
Logan likely would too, if he didn’t stand on honor. And Logan _does_. It’s most probably why he never turned on Erik, despite his discomfort with Erik’s actions. Loyalty means something to Logan. _Honor_ means something to him.  
  
Which is well and good, since if it didn’t he couldn’t be expected not to take advantage of the offer of safe passage and twist it to purposes that are... less than honorable.  
  
Erik will be more problematic to handle. It isn’t that he’ll break a treaty: when Erik makes a promise, he keeps it. But… he often makes his promises creatively, and while he holds to his own code of honor, he works to find ways around the letter of the law. He promises not to tell the world his friend is a bearer? Then he won’t: but he may possibly operate in such a way that the world figures it out regardless. This will be a matter of tying Erik up in an air-tight deal.  
  
Which is why Charles has worked clear through dinner trying to scribble out plans for tomorrow’s meeting—and also why he’s so engrossed in what he’s doing that he doesn’t notice the door creaking open until his guest has moved across the room to stand beside his desk.  
  
“I did knock,” Ororo says, leaning her hip against his desk and smiling softly.  
  
Is it that late? Is he _this_ tired? Must be: he’s usually more alert than this.  
  
Scrubbing a hand over his brow, he pushes his work aside and sets his pen down perpendicular to the paper. At some point he’s lit the lamp—Ororo has bent a bit of lightning to give them a power boost, but it’s best not to use it for frivolous things—but any memory of that is fleeting and insubstantial.  
  
“What time is it?”  
  
“Seven at night.”  
  
“I’m sorry, I know I promised to meet with you. I—“  
  
“Lost track of time?” She places a hand on the extra chair situated by the side of the desk against the wall and draws it slowly forward, scraping its legs along the ground in quiet protest. Once it’s turned to face him, she settles herself down onto it.  
  
“Yes,” he admits. After Hank had given him the all-clear and patched up whatever wounds he had, he’d retreated here, and—working was easier than thinking, easier than considering how he’d endangered his child. If there had been another option, any other option—had there been another option? Had he overlooked something? There had to be _another option._  
  
“You don’t look well.”  
  
“Dr. McCoy gave me a clean bill of health. Nothing but minor cuts and bruises.”  
  
“It isn’t physical injuries I’m worried about, Charles. We both know that.”  
  
They do. Anyone in their position would. But… Ororo is watching him quietly, and not with the cloying pity that others have shown. There’s understanding there, but it’s soft and accepting in the candle light, and her brown eyes are gentle, infinitely patient. When she crosses her legs and perches her clasped hands on one knee, it’s a natural extension of that patience: a minute, an hour—regardless, she has all the markings of someone willing to wait him out until his words are no longer clogged in his throat.  
  
And, slowly, it happens: his throat releases, and he gradually begins angling toward her, turning away from the desk and leaning forward, resting his elbows on his knees as he peers up at her. “How long did it take you to stop hating yourself?”  
  
She doesn’t need to ask what he means. “I haven’t. Not completely. But…” The lamplight catches the curve of her cheek, softening out the bone. “I understand myself too, these days.”  
  
He quirks his head. “How do you mean?”  
  
Peace may never be possible for either of them, but she has a fairly good approximation of it, or, as she says, an understanding. It shows in her smile, and in how she blinks slowly, edged with sadness. “I did horrible things at Shaw’s behest, Charles.”  
  
“You saved the world. You stopped the storms.”  
  
Her smile turns wry. “Yes. But one bit of good doesn’t cancel out the evil. And, as I’m sure you know, it doesn’t erase the guilt for those times when you _wanted_ your husband. Everything else is flexible, but knowing that, at times, I didn’t hate him—it feels unforgivable.”  
  
“Do you still? Want him, I mean.”  
  
Watching her nod is worse than a death sentence in some ways. “In some ways. And there was no bond. I can’t imagine what you’re feeling. What Emma felt.”  
  
Emma. Emma inflicts the same kind of hurt on others. Playing with lives, _enjoying_ taking that power back by leeching it out of others. If he scowls at that, it’s no less than she deserves.  
  
“She’s very broken, Charles,” Ororo tells him quietly.  
  
“So that gives her the right to break others?”  
  
“No. Never. But, if you can understand where she’s coming from…” She sighs. “She isn’t like you. She’s harder, more bitter. She dealt with what Shaw did by hating. You dealt with it by hurting. One is armor; one is flesh. And, now that she’s free, she doesn’t know how to go back to feeling things like she should.”  
  
Some days, armor would be preferable. If he hadn’t had to feel when Frost ripped his mind open, when Erik fucked him—if those things hadn’t reverberated down his spine and buried deep in his bones, in his blood itself, every beat of his heart might not be condemned to pump out guilt into his veins.  
  
“Did Shaw love her?”  
  
Ororo pulls her hands back, gathering them in her lap instead. And, finally, she looks away. “No. Me? He may have loved me in a way, in the best way _he_ could, but Emma was never anything more than a means to an end, and any affection he gave her, he used as a tool. It was no better than training a pet—and she was young, susceptible. She wanted him to want her.”  
  
“And what about you?”  
  
“I was an _accident_. Shaw knew that in order to keep control he would need to have people’s _minds_ , and not simply brutalize them into obedience. He found me shortly after the bombs began going off. Russia and America. I know those names have no meaning to you anymore, but…” She trails off, grimacing. “I was trying to stop the storms, and he found me, forced me to come with him. There was never another option: I was young, just a teenager, and I didn’t know how to stop him. And I was the perfect figurehead for his religion. Pass me off as a bearer, as a religious symbol—it was perfect for him. It didn’t matter that I’d been rendered sterile by the radiation. To him, I was exactly what he needed. And he controlled energy: he was able to keep me eternally young, just like him.”  
  
“Did you love him?”  
  
“Three hundred years? How could I not? I hated him, I wanted him dead and would have killed him myself, but, yes, there was love… of a kind. Although… Emma hasn’t had the sheer amount of time—but I think she may have loved him more. It’s hard to say. But, yes, I loved him. Not nearly as much as I hated him. But I did love him.”  
  
“Am I terrible for loving Erik? After everything he’s done?”  
  
Ororo sighs and tucks a piece of hair behind her ear. But… her face softens, and she regards him, for the first time, with a pity that’s for them both. “Charles, after everything that’s happened to you, no one on this earth has any right to judge how you feel about your husband. That’s yours, and yours alone.”  
  
“I hate him. Some days more than others. I’d rather die than go back to what it was when he—“ Rehashing his time with Erik is no good. If ever there were a way to insanity, that’s the path right there. “But I see good in him too.”  
  
“There _is_ good in him,” she agrees simply. If it’s as simple as that— _is_ it as simple as that?  
  
The skepticism must have affected his expression: she chuckles deep in her throat—not particularly humorously—and, as bizarre as it seems, leans forward, fitting her hand to his cheek. Three hundred years old, but her palm is softer than his own, and her touch is more nurturing than his own mother’s ever was. Sharon Xavier never cradled his face as though he were something precious. She never touched him at all, if she could help it.  
  
“What happens tomorrow is your decision, Charles,” she murmurs. “Lehnsherr may have good in him, but that doesn’t necessarily make it your job to drag it out of him. Only if you want to—only if _you_ want some sort of arrangement with him.”  
  
It’s been… so long since someone has touched him like this, devoid of motive, devoid of sexuality, and boiled down to the essence of warmth and comfort. It’s soothing, and he leans into her touch, fluttering his eyes closed and trying, just this once, to merely breathe, and nothing more.  
  
“Annulling the marriage will worsen the political situation,” he mutters eventually. “And I can’t legally do it anywhere other than in Westchester. I’ll still be legally married everywhere else.”  
  
“Yes. But it’s not the legality that you’re worried about.” Not a question, but simply a statement. And a correct one.  
  
Marriage doesn’t mean anything more than a piece of paper and Erik’s right to his body. It doesn’t say anything about what he feels. A divorce won’t change those feelings. It won’t erase anything. It isn’t logical. Anyone else—he’d hate anyone else. Emma—look at Emma. He can hate her for what she’s done, but Erik has done worse, and he can’t—can’t—  
  
Divorce won’t make love logical.  
  
“No,” he agrees, clenching his hand into the fabric of his trousers. “It’s not. And a divorce… it’s not what I want. I want—damn it, I _want_ —“ What? What does he want? Erik? Yes. But that isn’t the end of it. Erik comes with baggage, and Erik will try to control him. “I want things to be on _my_ terms.” As if his terms will be heeded. But a treaty—if he can work this correctly—  
  
But it’s never so easy, and he breathes out, choking down a curse. “Am I weak for—I don’t know, for _wanting_ him, I suppose?”  
  
“Weak?” Her hand drops, skimming his neck and falling down, down, until it rests over his hand. She tugs forward, drawing his hand out and up, and gripping it firmly between slim, strong fingers. “No. You walked away from him before. You have fought and fought and fought, and it isn’t weak to finally want a little peace.”  
  
“I can’t make this easy.”  
  
“No. But maybe salvageable?”  
  
Oh, gods, please. Erik is—he’s unyielding and stubborn, blind when it hurts the worst, but his good qualities—it’s so easy to become deeply entangled in those good qualities, and in Erik’s magnetic pull that, as fate would have it, is in no way limited to metal. His wit and challenge—no one in his presence can be complacent—and, when he allows it, his kindness—they’re things that leave a mark, that dip into a person’s insides and hook there, tugging and damaging further at any attempt to pull the hook out.  
  
“Maybe.”  
  
“No one is going to make you, Charles, not this time. This time, it’s on _your_ terms.”  
  
This time, when he nods Ororo lets him go, sliding her hand away and scraping the chair back as she stands. Her body blocks some of the light, casting her in shadow when he looks up at her, and though he can’t meet her eyes, angling himself in her direction is good enough. She’ll understand. “Thank you.”  
  
But she shakes her head. “Don’t thank me. Being told you have a choice? That’s something you should have had all along.”  
  
Should have. But didn’t. And, for reminding him of it, she’ll have his thanks. Call it courtesy. Call it solidarity.  
  
Whatever it is, it sinks down into him and soothes his muscles out of their knots and spills him back into his chair in a sprawl of limbs. Ororo either doesn’t notice or affords him the dignity of choosing not to, turning away instead and slipping across the room to the door. She doesn’t look back, electing instead to open it and steal out into the hallway, leaving him to his privacy. It’s good. It’s perfect. There’s nothing to gawk at here, nothing more interesting than someone making a choice that should have been his to make all along. If she doesn’t emphasize it, it can almost be normal.  
  
Thank you. _Thank you._  
  
 This isn’t quite peace, but it’s something like it. It’s settled, and it lets him unravel and think, sort through himself and pick away the rust that’s formed on his dignity.  
  
Erik is a choice. Choosing Erik is a _choice_. Not a duty, and not an expectation. It may not be the _best_ choice, but it’s _his_ to make.  
  
Rising up out of his chair, he snuffs out the light and heads for the door. The list will wait: anything that’s on it hinges upon his relationship with Erik.  
  
Best then, to discuss things with Erik. It may be a courtesy that Erik never gave _him,_ but.. _.._  
  
Where would this world be, if no one ever elected to be the better man?  
  
\-------------------  
  
Whatever one might claim for the sake of presenting oneself as a better person than reality allows, a decided perk of being king is the amount of leeway it grants in the small decisions. Though, if Charles’ telepathy were active, he would no doubt overhear a series of grave misgivings running through Kitty and Piotr’s minds—but neither of them say a word when he requests that they open the door of Erik’s cell.  
  
Regrettably, within two minutes, they won’t be the only ones wondering what he’s doing: there’s an extensive network of guards posted to watch Genosha’s prisoners—both Raven and Azazel included among that bunch—and information of this nature spreads worse than wildfire. The extent of the barracks will likely know before long.  
  
For the moment, though, Pitor draws out a key and unlocks the door, pulling back the heavy metal contraption. Were Erik in possession of his powers, putting him in a cell like this would be little better than gift wrapping him an escape route.  
  
There’s the possibility that it’s a touch cruel to taunt him this way, but it was honestly not the intention. A happy side effect, but—  
  
Nothing good can come from thinking that way.  
  
“Lock me in with him,” he tells Kitty right as he moves to step through the door. “I’ll knock when I want to leave.” The overnight bag slung over his shoulder is probably indication enough that such a call likely won’t be coming tonight.  
  
For Erik, it is indication of the same—or it would be if his gaze weren’t glued to Charles’ face from the moment the door closes and they’re left alone.  
  
“You’re all right,” Erik intones slowly, filling the noise with gravel and a peculiar hesitancy that isn’t natural for him in the least.  
  
As Charles had entered, Erik had been stretched out on the bed, one leg propped up, knee in the air, with the other tossed along the edge of the concrete wall. Years ago, legend has it that the prisons were built by someone who wanted a space capable of withstanding a scale of damage on par with what Shaw eventually unleashed. The legend might even be true. It doesn’t matter much anymore: the space under the mansion was converted centuries ago, far before Charles’ time.  
  
Upon Charles’ entrance, Erik had snapped an arm back, driving his elbow into the bed and propping himself up. Upon getting a good look at the person in front of him, rather than relaxing, his muscles had locked up, and he’d cocked his head to the side, peering curiously at Charles from under the edge of his fringe. Declarations of Charles’ health aside, he’s unsettlingly calm.  
  
The air rushes out of Charles’ lungs, and he tosses his overnight bag aside, off into the corner. Erik’s eyes linger on it briefly, but they quickly recoil back over to Charles. “The baby’s fine,” he reassures Erik, taking the chance to enact his own little inspection of the room.  
  
Not so bad, really. A double bed, a desk, a bathroom through the door on the wall opposite: it’s better than many prisoners get. Far, far better, truth be told, and probably superior to what most victors would bother giving those they’ve defeated.  
  
“Good. But I meant _both_ of you. You’re _both_ all right.”  
  
Oh.  
  
Baby-and-Charles, not simply Charles, not simply baby, and it’s becoming increasingly difficult to separate himself from the baby in his thoughts. Had Moira felt this way?  
  
Thinking that way won’t help. He is _not_ his wife. He isn’t a _woman._  
  
Because waiting will only exponentially increase the tension in an already taut situation, he concedes the staring contest to Erik in favor of moving deeper into the room, more towards the center. Anyone with sense wouldn’t have come here at all, would never willingly let his husband near him after what’s passed between them, but—  
  
It’s not supposed to be blame, Ororo had said. And she’d been right. No one else can judge this.  
  
If _he_ wants Erik….  
  
And, to throw _everything_ away, when a treaty between them could mean the difference between peace and thousands more dead, there was never any question at all that he would let Erik’s hand drift to his hip, brush there, once, then again, before resting more firmly. Watching Erik move: there had been a certain level of willpower required to stop from pulling away when Erik had slid off the bed and lurched across the room, but Erik is here now, and he’s wearing the look of one half-captivated by the display in front of him.  
  
Granted, the other half of his expression is pretty certainly anger, but blessings should be appreciated when they come: if it’s only _half_ anger, they’ve cobbled together a good start.  
  
“What were you _thinking_?”  
  
The hand on his hip squeezes, and Erik jerks at him, shaking him back and forth, though with no real hurt to the motion. His mother shook him far worse on numerous occasions—and Kurt never bothered with shaking at all, but skipped right to the belt.  
  
Severity aside, though, Erik no longer has the right to shake him like a naughty child. But does _Erik_ recognize that? No. How laughable to think he would. Erik doesn’t recognize defeat so much as he regroups, biding his time.  
  
But _this_ time, he’d damn well better get it through his thick skull: there will be no regrouping, no second chance, and if he can’t accept that, there will be no chance at _all_. If there can be no accord between him and Erik, then there will be _nothing_ between them.  
  
Returning to what they were after they were married is out of the question.  
  
Smacking Erik’s hand off his hip, Charles tilts his chin up and locks their gazes, narrowing his own as he waits for Erik to catch on and wipe that—that—it’s bloody well _entitled,_ that’s what that expression is. And it needs to go. Erik may think he has the right to command, but—no, not anymore. Never again. Not like things were.  
  
“The next time you insult me by thinking you can manhandle me about, I’ll leave, do you understand?”  
  
Understand? Surely not. But, then, that was always overly optimistic. He’ll settle for Erik adhering to his stipulations.  
  
Easier said than done. He may as well have smacked Erik in the face: his eyebrows shoot for his hairline, and his displeasure slams down into his mouth and flattens it into a line of consternation. “Then why are you here?” he snaps, withdrawing his hand.  
  
Now that’s utterly _petty_.  
  
“Because, Erik, as disgusted as I am with—“ He breaks off, shaking his head. The list of things Erik has done that are deserving of reprimand is too long, too painful to rehash right now. “Is it so difficult to believe,” he begins again, titling his chin up and watching Erik, “that I missed you?”  
  
Erik crosses his arms. “Yes, actually. Or have your forgotten that we’ve literally fought _another_ war over your refusal to return home?”  
  
“I _am_ home.”  
  
“Your home is with _me_.”  
  
“My home—“ No. This is not why he came here. He and Erik can toss words until they’ve drained the oxygen from the room. It wouldn’t matter. Nothing would be solved, and they’d spend the night at each other’s throats, when what both of them really want is….  
  
It’s easier, sometimes, to talk with silence, and with the help of motions: reasoning with Erik has accomplished nothing, but darting a hand out and seizing Erik’s wrist—that has a chance. Erik stills against his touch, but, after an initial tensing of his muscles, he eases up and allows Charles to guide his hand downward, depositing it over the noticeable swell of his stomach.  
  
 _This_ is what he came here to have.  
  
“All right?” he asks, and when Erik doesn’t answer—too busy regarding the bump with wide-eyed awe and a dose of fear well within the parameters of that which is natural for impending fatherhood—Charles sighs and releases the strain in his shoulders, leaning forward and dropping his head to Erik’s shoulder. Warmth and muscle, the realness of being able to butt his head against Erik’s neck and grind his forehead into skin and cloth. That, and Erik’s free arm creeping around his back, holding him close. Words never would have achieved this.  
  
“This is—I can’t believe…” Erik draws a finger from the top of the bump, down over the front, further, further, and ending up just above Charles’ pelvis.  
  
“I didn’t either, until I felt it.”  
  
“You—the baby’s moving?”  
  
Her puffs out a chuckle. “Like little flutters on the inside. It isn’t much, but… yes.”  
  
No one would ever fight if they could stay wrapped up in a situation like this. Nothing has felt this easy in… years, actually. It would be better if David were here too—though, perhaps not, when that would mean terror at the prospect of having Erik near him. With any luck, that terror will lessen now that the war is over, and possibly, just maybe, he’ll be able to see Erik in the same room as David without having a panic attack at the sight. But when the new baby comes—having Erik hold a live infant isn’t quite like cuddling up to him while the baby is still safely tucked away inside his womb.  
  
They’ll work on that. If Erik will agree to stipulations….  
  
“I don’t think you’ve ever looked more beautiful, Darling,” Erik murmurs, ducking in and rooting around, worse than an animal after a buried bit of food—but it’s nice, Erik nuzzling in just below his ear, into the dip behind his jaw. Oh, ticklish—but when he squirms Erik only presses more firmly, transitioning his attention from light enough to tickle into a far more concentrated effort that ends mostly in deep kisses, more mouth than gentle press.  
  
“I look _fat_ ,” he protests, and while it’s probably not wise, fatigue—and, now that the exhaustion is catching up, he _is_ tired—overrules and he ends up sinking into Erik’s embrace, allowing Erik to form up around him and guide him back to the bed. They curl together, with Erik leaning back against the wall, functioning as an improvised chair. A cradle, more like, the way Erik folds in around him, tugging Charles in between his legs and sliding his arms around him. “It was hell wearing armor.”  
  
“You walked out onto that battlefield thinking you could die.”  
  
And with one sentence, the peace is strangled.  
  
Bring it back, please, bring it back: and surely he can guide Erik away from this line of thinking.  
  
“Was Frost as duplicitous when she worked for you as she was with me?”  
  
“Yes, gods forbid she’d stop you from blowing yourself up.” Said wryly, but there’s precious little humor in Erik’s voice, and by this point he’s shuttered his affection—not breaking contact, but easing up on the intimacy, settling instead for resting his cheek against Charles hair and sighing out his frustration. “Yes. She may be on your side, but that doesn’t mean you can trust her: at the end of the day, the only side she’s _really_ on is her own.”  
  
“Ororo adopted her, you know. When Frost was a child. And Shaw…”  
  
Erik scoffs. “Was interested in children? There’s very little that man could do that would surprise me. Children, though. That’s disgusting.”  
  
“She was old enough that she was no longer a child by the time he touched her.”  
  
“Doesn’t matter. Growing up, having her in his household, his consort viewing her as their daughter—disgusting, that he ever thought to touch her.”  
  
Ah, yes, ethics by Erik Lehnsherr: a crash course in building yourself the high ground when there’s no earth naturally left under your feet. That’s not to say he’s wrong in this particular instance, but, still….  
  
“And Munroe—I can only imagine what life must have been like for her. Infertile, and stuck with Shaw.”  
  
Rather like fertile and stuck with Erik, probably—only, no, that isn’t fair. Shaw was a sadist. Cruel, vicious, and Ororo hasn’t said anything, hasn’t explained what her life was like, but no one had seen her in public for years prior to Shaw’s death. She’d been locked away until he and Erik had broken Genosha wide open. Life with Shaw would have been no better than being sealed, living, into a tomb with a sadistic madman at her side playing jailer.  
  
Charles turns his face further into Erik’s shoulder, closing his eyes and enjoying the rasp of Erik’s top against his cheek. It’s a comforting fabric, soft with many washes—Erik’s own sleep clothes, abandoned in haste when Erik had left Westchester when it became undeniable that he could hold the city no longer. “I’d rather not—just—talk to me about something else, all right?”  
  
There’s the space of a second where Erik’s jaw works, poking down against Charles’ scalp—and the refusal is hanging there, halfway said already, but, by some stroke of hitherto unknown capacity for compromise, Erik snaps his jaw shut and lets the moment drift past. “All right. How about you tell me precisely why you’re here?”  
  
A fair question, really. Erik doesn’t need to add that Charles is more than welcome: such a basic fact was never in question, but it’s no surprise that he can’t conceive of a reason why he’d find himself so favored. No one in any of the regions could at this point possibly believe that their marriage is functional and amicable.  
  
“I already told you: I missed you.”  
  
“And _I_ told you: in light of your actions, that’s difficult to believe.”  
  
Not really—and if Erik is so uncertain, he really ought to consider pulling way, unfurling from the near-suctioned hold that he’s taken up, wound so tightly around Charles’ body that it’s becoming increasingly problematic, this business of untangling their separate entities. If not for the circlet—and it must be driving Erik mad, pressed against the bottom of his chin as he rests his cheek in Charles’ hair. But, if not for the _circlet_ —Erik would be burrowing into his mind, and vice versa.  
  
Telepathy would make it a great deal simpler to untangle this mess.  
  
But, if the bond were active, there’s a good chance that it would never get untangled at all.  
  
But… “I don’t need telepathy to know that’s a lie.” A child could call Erik on this—on the blind hope that characterizes almost nothing else in his life, but that he possesses in spades when it comes to the possibility of Charles’ affection.  
  
Kicking the sheet against his foot—damn thing is too warm—Charles stretches a leg out, pushing it beyond the confines of Erik’s neatly-made cage: both legs up, bracketing Charles in against him. He tangles the sheet up between his toes and tugs it away, leaning in against Erik’s neck as the motion stretches on, more of a distraction for them both than an actual accomplishment. “You believe I’m here because I want to be. What you don’t understand is _why_ I would want to be, when I fought so hard to escape.”  
  
“And I suppose you’re going to enlighten me?” Said so casually, but there’s no hiding the tension in his hand when it drops down, latching onto Charles’ thigh and squeezing. _Are you real?_ Erik doesn’t say it—but he doesn’t need to when everything about that gesture is his attempt at affirmation.  
  
“Not if you don’t want me to.”  
  
“ _Charles_.”  
  
Some things never change: stern and commanding right up until the end—not that this is the end. That’s the _point_.  
  
“I’m here because it’s my _choice_ to be here. I _want_ to be here.”  
  
“Yes…?”  
  
Easy? No. Erik would never understand so effortlessly, would never reorient his brain into the perspective that this requires. “I am here, Erik, because I _want_ to be—and that is the only way you will ever have me. I am here because it is now _my_ prerogative to make that decision, and, in the future, you will recognize the validity of that prerogative, or I will make a different choice.”  
  
“Charles—“  
  
“I would prefer you didn’t answer.” Tomorrow they’ll battle this out. Good sense would have kept any kind of explanation well wrapped until that point, but Erik had _asked_ , and it was never going to be easy, regardless of when it was said. “In this, I _will_ have your assent—or _you_ will have nothing at all. Ironic, isn’t it?”  
  
Bitter, more like. Possibly cruel. But this is upholding a choice—not stripping another human being of every last scrap of autonomy. Parallels aside—  
  
Damn it all, there should be no guilt. But there _is_. To turn those words on Erik— _your opinion doesn’t matter_ —it should be satisfying, should be justice, but it only rakes at the inside of his ribs, too intense to let him do much thinking. Leave the thinking for tomorrow.  
  
For tonight….  
  
“I came here to sleep. That’s all I wanted. So, if you don’t mind, I’ll take a shower, and then I’ll do exactly that.”  
  
“I’ll join you.”  
  
“Then you had better _ask_.”  
  
The demand staggers Erik, enough to kill any motion he might have made when Charles clambers out from between his legs. Erik doesn’t stop him from tipping sideways, from putting his weight down on his hip and sliding off the bed and to his feet. By the time Erik reorients himself, Charles is already halfway across the room.  
  
“Charles.” Not a command, but not a request for permission either. It isn’t even properly a question, though there’s a touch of wonder in the tone.  
  
That isn’t good enough. Erik will play by the rules laid down, or Charles will simply sweep the pieces off the board altogether.  
  
The door to the bathroom clicks shut behind him when he closes it. The handle is metal, and he half expects it jump up and latch onto his hand, most likely restrain him in some way, hands behind his back… or held to the wall—that would do nicely. Erik could easily get creative. It wouldn’t be the first time.  
  
Thank gods for the suppression. Now is neither the time nor the place—and there will never be a time or a place again, if things go according to plan.  
  
Running a hand through his hair, Charles shakes it loose and shudders. It’s too easy to slip back into this mode of thought, constantly on high alert and waiting for an inevitable turnabout. Erik is here, and so Erik will find ways to control him: it seems so unavoidable, and easing into the opposite mindset is not so much easing as a thorough self-beating. It’s shoving that concept into his own skull and refusing to believe otherwise.  
  
Erik won’t have that power over him ever again.  
  
He won’t.  
  
With quick fingers, he tugs his way out of his shirt and moves on to his trousers, ignoring the shaking of his hands. It’ll be all right. This isn’t dependence—or not the kind that means locked doors. So what if he wants Erik still? It’s better that they make things work, that they resolve military matters without conflict. The best way to do that is to maintain their marriage. Logical. And if his attachment to Erik is more personal than that, it is, as Ororo said, no one’s business but his own.  
  
No one has any right to question that, so long as he doesn’t allow himself to slip back into those godsdamned patterns, letting Erik command him, letting Erik issue orders rather than asking, letting his body sing for Erik at the expense of his bloody _mind_ —  
  
No. It isn’t—he sucks in a deep breath. It won’t be that way. The treaty tomorrow will tie things up, bind him separate from Erik as much as it binds him _to_ him. Two separate lands. Rights. Having back the right to rule. It can happen. It _will_ happen.  
  
And, in the meantime, there’s this: the rounded bulge of his stomach, fitting into the curve of his palm. There are slight stretch marks beginning to peek into existence toward the sides of his stomach, but they’re tiny as of yet, and Hank has been very reassuring in his hopes that they won’t be too major. If they are, it wouldn’t especially matter. Sexual attractiveness isn’t a must. More babies are not a necessity, nor, given the state of things, all that advisable.  
  
Gods, though, it’s odd, feeling disassociated from his body. This was never supposed to be a reality, and to go from looking in the mirror and feeling like a guardian in every manner but between his legs, to—to looking like _this_. How is that supposed to be possible? Do other bearers _like_ the look of themselves while pregnant?  
  
For once, Erik’s timing isn’t terrible: the opening of the door is a welcome distraction from the bizarre shape of his stomach. Although, standing naked in front of the mirror—polished steel rather than glass—when Erik makes his entrance is relatively high on the list of inadvisable activities.  
  
It’s little wonder that Erik pulls up short, eyes zoning in automatically on the curve of Charles’ stomach.  
  
“Oh.” The word is soft, nearly reverent, though undeniably surprised.  
  
Deep breath. Inhale, exhale. Don’t show shame. “I’m going to shower.”  
  
“You said I could join.”  
  
“For a _shower_.”  
  
Not for sex. It doesn’t matter that he wants it, or that his body has been craving touch for the last few months. Pregnancy may kick up the sex drive, but more important than satisfying a momentary urge is the promise of a boundary. If Erik is allowed to fuck him up against the wall of the shower, nothing will have changed.  
  
“ _Just_ a shower,” he adds, eyeing Erik, who, to his credit, doesn’t balk or try to convince otherwise. Rather, he limits himself to a quick, curt nod, and, in light of that, it’s easier to ignore him when he begins stripping off his clothes and folding them up, setting them aside in neat piles. Looks rather silly next to the crumpled form of Charles’ own garments, tossed haphazardly against the wall—but Erik is hardly about to criticize him for _that_.  
  
No, if he wants to criticize, he has far more important matters to latch onto.  
  
The noise of the spray drowns out the sounds of Erik moving about the bathroom. One glance would put an image to the erased noises, but looking back would also give Erik the satisfaction of knowing he holds the command of the room. And it’s not true. He _doesn’t_. But actions can scream that directly into the brain, where words will fall on deaf ears: score one, then, for the willpower it takes to stay facing the shower, occasionally flicking fingers into the spray of water to test the temperature.  
  
There. That’ll do. And—oh, that’s lovely. It’s been—how long has it been since he’s had a proper wash? That is, not some abbreviated bath at the edge of a stand in the tent. Too long. And it’s been longer since the luxury of hot water has been available. To lean back into it, tip his head up and catch it into the strands of hair sopping down the sides of his face—it’s a luxury fit for a king, and forget the crown: a shower will be plenty of recognition, thank you.  
  
“Your hair’s gotten longer.”  
  
With the curtain lacking hooks, the cloth pulls silently back from where it’s fastened to the ceiling: there’s no tell-tale squeak to herald Erik’s entrance. That’s the problem with having to make certain that nothing in the bathroom can be too easily used as a weapon. Truthfully, they hadn’t tried very hard with this cell, not when it was made for Erik especially—and right from the start there had been no doubt that Erik isn’t going to try to knock Charles out with whatever weapon he could find. The lengths he’ll go to _avoid_ physical damage, especially during pregnancy, have been attested to clearly enough in the field today.  
  
But, even so—the possibility ought not to be too tempting, and the designers of this cell have done an excellent job in crafting it to emphasize deterrence.  
  
“I had more important things to think about than cutting my hair.”  
  
“You always kept clean-shaven and well-trimmed while chasing Shaw.”  
  
Yes, because at that juncture he’d still been vain enough to want Erik to find him attractive, as much as he might have denied that to himself. Now—has that changed? He runs a hand through his hair, shaking his head back and forth under the water as Erik steps up behind him. Erik hasn’t ceased to find him attractive, that much is very clear. So… is it a matter of no longer caring, or of simply knowing that he need not work for Erik’s attention?  
  
There’s a niggling sensation of guilt that very much points to the latter.  
  
Downright pathetic, that is.  
  
Sticking his hand under the flow of water one more time to test, he shakes the water off his hand, ignoring the pointlessness of that when he’s about to douse himself, and steps forward into the shower. The water hits him front on, pouring down over the front of him and sluicing away the sweat and grit that had almost begun to fuse in and become part of the skin. The last few days haven’t been exactly conducive to cleaning, and, before that, it had been a matter of living on the front: showers have been hard to come by, and warm water in the quantities needed for bathing had almost become a fantasy. A shower—a proper shower—is indulgence itself. Thank the gods for Ororo and her willingness to give their generators a bit of a power boost. With power still not properly restored to the mansion, her intervention is about the only thing making this possible. A little lightning goes a long way. Although, with Erik’s control of magnetic fields, he might also be able to generate lightning.  
  
Erik. Yes, Erik.  
  
Erik, who has stepped sideways into the shower behind him. A soft pat to Charles’ lower back has him moving forward, granting Erik some space under the spray, and, when nothing further follows that, it’s almost sufficient to make him hope that Erik won’t push for anything more substantial.  
  
Wistful thinking, at best. This is _Erik_. His best form of communication _is_ pushing, testing out limits, and discerning precisely how much ground he can take before he faces a fight.  
  
“I said shower only.” One quick shove dislodges Erik’s hands from where they’ve crept around to the front of Charles’ body, dangerously close to parts of his body that could easily be persuaded to do more than shower.  
  
“Charles—“  
  
“You think I didn’t mean it? I’ll leave. Maybe you’ve forgotten what it’s like when I have the ability to walk away. But _I_ haven’t. Don’t test me.”  
  
Interesting, the effectiveness of that: Erik’s hands don’t make a reappearance, except to reach for the bottle of wash on the shelf. Actually, that’s an excellent idea. It’s no good thinking on what, exactly, has taken up residence in his hair at the moment—battle isn’t a recipe for cleanliness—but washing it out wouldn’t go amiss. “Spare me some of that, hmm?”  
  
A pause. “I’ll get your hair for you, if you’d like.”  
  
“And let you get your hands that close to the inhibitor? I would _not_ like.” Just because Erik likely wouldn’t be able to use him to break out past _everyone_ is not a reason to allow him to try. Contingencies are in place, yes—a number of guards with telepathy-blocking helmets, specifically Armando—but testing them is not on today’s agenda.  
  
“I’m not planning to try,” Erik answers, too huffy to be convincingly objective—not that he was probably aiming for that.  
  
“All the same. Just hand me the bottle when you’re finished.”  
  
Erik’s move, then. Surprisingly, it’s a short wait: the bottle is handed over a few moments later with no greater protest than another short sigh, and Erik reaching around him again for the soap. While that’s a justifiable necessity, the shower is rather small, and the movement bumps them together. As quick as the contact is, it exists, and—no denying those vicious little shivers that tingle from the point of contact.  
  
“Thank you.”  
  
Soaping up his own hair around the inhibitor, he grinds his fingers down into his scalp, digging nail marks through into in the skin, though they’ll never be seen, hidden as they are in the hair. It’s damn near luxurious, though, scraping away the accumulation of filth in his hair. Rinsing is the best part, tipping his head back and allowing the water to sluice down through his locks.  
  
“You’re hurt.”  
  
“Hmm? Not really. Cuts and bruises only.”  
  
“Here.” A finger taps his shoulder, barely above a particularly nasty bruise.  
  
“Nothing serious.”  
  
A pause, but when Erik’s voice comes again, it’s higher, thinned with anxiety. “Five months pregnant, Charles, and you—fuck it, I can’t—do you even realize—?” Erik’s breath spills out in a rush. “You were willing to kill your own child.”  
  
And so the sleepless nights will soon prove. Willing, no, but backed into it, cornered and desperate, and Erik is mad if he thinks it won’t be a point of torture for as long as there’s life left in him. Sleeping—if that ever happens again, with the mess of the last few years kicking about inside his head, sleeping will inevitably contain replicas of that decision.  
  
But to be _blamed_ for it. No one will ever blame him more than he blames himself. But to be blamed by _Erik_.  
  
“Don’t you _dare_ ,” he snarls, and he’s whipping around before he can think better of it, planting his hands onto Erik’s chest and shoving, slamming him back into the wall. “Don’t judge me, don’t you fucking _dare_ look at me like that, when _you_ were the one who put my back against the wall.”  
  
“You could have come home.”  
  
“And what if our baby is a bearer? Have you thought of _that_? Oh, yes, Erik, I could have come home, could have found myself trapped again. Could have—“ He breaks off, breathing hard.  
  
Shorter than Erik he may be, but, height difference or not, he will have this said, and it will be said in close, inches from Erik’s face. Erik is too calm, close to blank, but he’s holding his ground. He’s not the only one: his own eyes must be sparking, spitting out the kind of rage that’s boiling up. It’s not healthy to be this angry. Hating like this grinds away the good things, but it’s there, it hurts, and ignoring it would be returning to what he was. Dealing with it—he’ll have to eventually, but for now surviving it and channeling it is the best that can be hoped for.  
  
“I could have been _this_.”  
  
And he thrusts his wrist out into Erik’s line of sight, flashing the scrawled black writing out under the assault of the water. Behind him, the water rushes over the back of his head and against his shoulders, but the steady pounding of it is lost in comparison to the violent thumping of his heart as it pumps out blood to limbs that nevertheless are disconcertingly numb.  
  
“And _only_ this,” he presses on, tossing the words haphazardly in Erik’s direction. “Think what you reduced me to, and _then_ consider why I wouldn’t, as you say, _come home_.” Home, when home was a prison—and it wasn’t _his_ home. Westchester was home. But Erik won’t understand that, and he won’t understand the outright dismissal of the mark, either, when Charles tries to toss his wrist aside, back down to his side.  
  
 Erik catches it mid-air. Fine. There’s more to say anyway. “Explain how you think I could have _ever_ been happy with what you were doing to me.” A quick twist of his wrist, but Erik’s fingers hold firm. “ _Look_ at what you tried to make me.”  
  
Jerking against Erik’s grip amounts to nothing more than a slight tug and shift of muscles, his arm moving a scant few inches, and Erik’s hold tightening in direct correlation with the tension in his face. “I made you _mine._ ”  
  
“You _tried_ to make me yours, you mean.”  
  
Tried, and did not succeed. Not completely. Some, but not to the point of mindlessness. Ache and longing can be dealt with, mitigated until he can function without incorporating Erik into his thoughts. A compromise will do even better: having Erik, and keeping himself.  
  
If ever Erik will accept that.  
  
“You either concede that you no longer have the ability to order me about, or you best resign yourself to your right hand, Erik.” This time, when he tugs, his arm bursts free of Erik’s grip, helped by the slickness of the water and the laxity of Erik’s grip, likely from surprise. Not what he expected to hear? How trying it must be, to be told “no” when, for such a long time, that was never an option. “Or, if you’re especially desperate, I’m sure there are any number of individuals who would willingly warm your bed.”  
  
Erik’ lip curls, but the effect is somewhat lost in light of the lack of focus in his gaze. Surprise is an effective stunning agent. “Jealous?”  
  
Now is not the time for lies, as convenient as they’d be. “Yes.”  
  
Seems the truth is good for more than just communication: it wipes the smirk straight off Erik’s face.  
  
“Of course I’m jealous, Erik.” Smiling bitterly, he rubs his wrist against the side of his hip. Stupid habit, nervous habit, and so useless: the mark is never coming off, no matter how often it ends up rubbed against an available surface. “But I won’t lick your boots for it; I won’t bend over and let you do as you please, when you please, and how you please. I won’t give you my autonomy. And I won’t let you take it either.”  
  
A flicker of confusion ripples in the wrinkle between Erik’s brows. “It was never about making a pet of you, Charles. I wanted your advice, your thoughts, and your mind. I wanted to rule _with_ you.”  
  
“No. _You_ wanted to rule, and you wanted me to _support_ you. You wanted my help and my thoughts, yes, but if they were inconvenient to you, you wanted to shut them—and me—away and carry on as you pleased. And you thought I’d be happy, once nature took its course.”  
  
“Guardians are meant to protect—“  
  
“Then you _protect_ me. You don’t _own_ me.”  
  
If it were possible to ease Erik into understanding that… And that’s the origin of the lingering flicker of hope and the rationalization that someday it will be—that, in a bizarre turnabout, he is now hoping as Erik hoped, that eventually, if they carry on like this, Erik will _have_ to accept the way things are. That doesn’t mean his cooperation can be relied upon, and, in the interim, the harsh set of Erik’s jaw, the manner in which he rolls his shoulders back, setting them off to pull up an extra half inch or so of height—Erik is no more listening now than he ever has. Debating, perhaps, but not weighing opinions in any way more substantial than what it takes to counter the arguments thrown at him.  
  
And that isn’t any kind of understanding.  
  
“I wouldn’t have settled, Erik.” Softening his voice—Erik may take it for weakness, but… can it be pity? Erik will never understand, and, in turn, he will hurt in his own way for as long as he believes nature owes him something that his bearer isn’t delivering. “I think you expected that one day I’d wake up, roll over and smile up at you, perfectly content to have your babies, assist you in running a kingdom, and defer to your opinion when necessary. And that was never going to happen.”  
  
Never is not, in Erik’s mind, a limit. Rather like defeat: it’s only a matter to be overcome. Here they are, naked in a shower, mutually glaring—Erik’s face has fallen into that expression, anger curling naked up the lines of his face—and they couldn’t be more divided. Physically, there are few scenarios in which they could be laid more bare, but despite the physical exposure, Erik isn’t hearing a word that’s being said. He may as well be wrapped in metal.  
  
They’ve now fought two wars against each other, with a victory on each side, and Erik has yet to learn to listen to him.  
  
Eventually, maybe. If tomorrow goes well, and Erik is forced to be content with what he has, he might learn the value of autonomy, and the necessity of respect: he’ll have to respect any man who can control when he comes and goes into a large portion of the world. Right?  
  
 _Right?_  
  
No. Erik doesn’t have to do a damn thing he doesn’t want to, at least in his own mind. If he doesn’t want to see, then he won’t.  
  
But there’s no point in arguing against him—or trying to compromise with him—while he’s locked in this mindset.  
  
“Move,” Charles hisses out quietly, jerking his chin to the side and flicking his gaze to the edge of the curtain. Letting Erik in the shower with him in the first place was a mistake, but…  
  
But nothing. It was only weakness.  
  
And Erik compounds the problem by staying put. If anything, he settles further into his own frame, holding his ground and heating the space between them—hardly more than a foot—with the searing unrest that turns his eyes dark and dilates his pupils.  
  
“Now, Erik. Maybe once you had the capability of directing my comings and goings, but not anymore.”  
  
The air between them is dead. It’s sliced through by the water streaming out of the showerhead, but still dead, almost heavy, weighing them down. It’s a pregnant pause, and there was never any illusion that it could last, but it’s still a surprise when Erik moves.  
  
In one smooth attack, he slams through the spray of water, sending droplets spraying and colliding off against the walls and curtain. There’s enough time to try to block, hands up, slapping against the flesh of Erik’s chest, but not enough to brace, and it probably wouldn’t have mattered: Erik is larger, heavier, and the weight of him barrels forward, colliding—it hurts, smacking into Erik and falling the few inches backward to thud dully against the wall. Not too hard, really, and cushioned by Erik’s hands, steadying him at the waist. But a bit of water under the foot, slipping—but Erik’s hand darts out, grabbing for the nearest bit of skin.  
  
“Ow—that—“ Caught by the wrist? Not an overly well-planned maneuver, but it becomes a moot point anyway: he isn’t going anywhere, with Erik’s body pinning him up against the wall. That should be enough, but it is _never_ enough for Erik, and it’s a small wonder that he’s being careful at all, but—  
  
The baby. This is no longer a fight in a hallway, or a squabble in a nursery, where Erik can throw him around without consequences. Five months pregnant isn’t quite impossible to miss, but it’s getting closer: that bulge wouldn’t easily be mistaken for his own stomach.  
  
They lurch to a stop, Erik plastered up along Charles’ front, his hands pinning each wrist, and their noses nearly touching from proximity. Close like this, every inhalation Erik makes presses their chests together, slippery with the water. “I’ve missed you.”  
  
So much that Erik has resorted to manhandling when he doesn’t get what he wants otherwise. Just because Erik doesn’t see it that way doesn’t make it any less true. How could it? If it were up to Erik, this situation would be based on the potential for a happy family, imminent sex, and the satisfaction he finds by looking at his bearer’s rounded stomach.  
  
Worse, Charles’ stomach _is_ prominent. Not huge, but enough that it bulges out and pushes firmly against Erik’s flat, hard muscles, and, when put in comparison, it’s almost grotesque. It doesn’t look natural, isn’t what was reflected back in the mirror for every other year of life.  
  
“You haven’t heard me at all.” Wiggling his foot to the side, he tries to angle his leg and nudge at Erik’s knee. Erik shifts to counter him, holding him steady. “Nothing I’ve just said to you—do you listen _at all_?”  
  
“I heard you, Charles.”  
  
Damn wisps of breath, fanning out and tickling skin. With Erik this close, his words burst out in puffs of air, and, though it’s the last thing that would help right now, there’s the temptation to wrinkle his nose.  
  
“I heard you, but I don’t agree. You’re wrong. Look around you. This world agrees with what _I_ am telling _you_. Do you realize how impossible you are, disagreeing with the entire world and expecting me to heed you?”  
  
“Don’t worry, I’m _far_ beyond the point where I _expect_ you to heed me. It’s more of a hopeful wish at this point.” The water spreads over his face when he tips his head back, running in rivulets down his skin and dripping off his chin. Erik lets him go, making no move to grab a hold of his face. “I allowed you to join me under the stipulation that this was _just_ a shower. I’d say it’s altogether clear exactly how much your word means, when given to _me_.”  
  
Erik’s grip tightens. “It means _everything_ when given to _you_.”  
  
“And, yet, here we are.” And here they have been for far too long. It was a long shot, thinking he could spend the night with Erik without it deteriorating in this. Still, the attempt was worth it, though the results are not. “Let me out of the shower.”  
  
Erik doesn’t move. “Or what? You may have soldiers posted outside, but they can’t hear you in here.”  
  
That was always a consideration. Banking on Erik’s inability to hold him down and forcefully take what he wants is quite a gamble, but—the dice are thrown, and it’s only left to discover the result.  
  
Yes, the result. A necessary experiment, because if Erik—if—gods forbid, if he’s so far gone as to be capable of raping his bearer, right here, right now, with guards outside listening, there’s no coming back from that. Better to find out now than in a position where there’s no eventual escape.  
  
“I suppose that’s true,” he agrees evenly. Oh, didn’t expect that, Erik? Which would explain why his hand wavers, flexing, but quivering too. “Is it worth it to you, to have me any way you like tonight, when you know tomorrow that can’t last? You touch me now, Erik, and it will be the _last_ time you do—and, unlike before, you know that this time I have the means to make that threat a reality.”  
  
“I don’t—“ His face pinches. “I want—“ Everything, yes, that’s the problem. His own way, most of all. But his mouth twists, and he frowns, parting his lips and hissing out a frustrated breath, just before his fingers twitch one more time, and he—doesn’t let go, exactly. Rather, he sinks downward, lowering to his knees, and…  
  
Leave it to Erik to retain the element of surprise. Of all the things that should have happened tonight, Erik leaning his head into the meat of Charles’ thigh was not one of them. But Erik rests there, pushing his cheek against the skin as he reaches up and grasps Charles’ hips, fingers slotting into the groove of his hip bones and giving Erik a better, firmer hold. Not a violent hold, but a desperate one, and so blatantly an attempt to retain what’s slipping away while at the same time refraining from strangling it—it’s sad, that’s all. Incredibly sad.  
  
“I never wanted only your body, Charles. I want _you_.”  
  
“That I don’t doubt.”  
  
Erik’s hair is darker like this, soaked in water, almost black. It flows, rushing along with the water, strands pulling up short where they’re attached to the scalp. They’re messy, out of place, and it’s an indulgence to reach down and sweep a hand through those locks, but, after everything, isn’t he allowed some small pleasure?  
  
“If I’d become what you wanted, Erik, it wouldn’t have been me anymore.”  
  
“That’s not true,” Erik mumbles out into Charles’ thigh, sending a rumble through the flesh. “It’s always you, always would have _been_ you, just… in a place where you were supposed to be.”  
  
Having Erik this close to his cock is impossible to ignore. Although the arousal has diffused out of the situation, it doesn’t necessarily take intent to create interest, and having Erik’s mouth inches away from where he’d like it most doesn’t make for easy ignorance. If not for the ache of being split open by a topic that they have so continuously debated for years now, he’d be hard. Not now, though. The urge to cry is stronger than anything else.  
  
What if this can’t be fixed? What then? The prospect of walking away irrevocably and discarding Erik draws his eyes down to the man on his knees, and to Erik’s hands, where his thumbs are stroking over the bones of Charles’ hips. It isn’t sexual so much as it is a truly bizarre method of supplication, possibly of begging.  
  
“You’re wrong,” he whispers, licking a few of the droplets off his lips and tensing his fingers in Erik’s hair. “I hated what you did to me, and I won’t go back to it. If that means walking away completely—“  
  
Then he’ll do it. Gods above, he’ll do it, and it might rip out the last bit of life that he has, but it would be worth it: if he’s living dead, he’s dead, regardless of whether it’s walking away from Erik that kills him, or whether it’s bending to Erik’s will and being erased entirely. Both would leave a shell: the difference being, in one of those scenarios, Erik has access to his telepathy.  
  
“You can’t walk away from me.” Tipping his head back and exposing the long line of his throat, Erik holds his stare, though he blinks rapidly, trying to push the water out of his eyes. “You tried. Five months ago—“  
  
“I tried to negotiate with you, and we ended up fucking against a pole in a tent. I was there. I remember.”  
  
“Then why—?”  
  
“Proximity is a killer, Erik—and it isn’t something I’d have to worry about if I determined never to see you again.”  
  
His Adams apple bobs when he swallows. “You’re pregnant.”  
  
“And _you_ aren’t suitable to raise a child.”  
  
“You’d take my child away too?” He has no right to sound as strained as he does at the prospect. He must have seen this coming, surely.  
  
Yes. He’d take the child, and he’d leave. He’d do it. He, David, and the baby, hiding in Westchester, behind the border, and ignoring the fact—all the facts, really. It isn’t a workable scenario. Fate may have changed, may have put him in power, but, in reality, Erik isn’t utterly without sway in this instance: he may be poised to lose everything, but he’s in a position to cause a very great amount of destruction on his way down.  
  
If they tangle up their emotions, they’ll spread like a net across the rest of the world, sweeping everyone else along with them. That’s the kind of destruction that can’t be allowed. And for that reason, this talk was never supposed to occur tonight. There need to be others—level-headed, objective others—present, who can weigh the merits of their agreement. It shouldn’t be made in a shower, with Erik on his knees, having proven that he hasn’t yet given up the belief that Charles is, in some odd intrinsic sense, _his_.  
  
They’ll never get anywhere like this.  
  
At least nowhere good.  
  
“Let go,” he whispers, barely audible at first, words lost in the pounding of water on the tiles. But, the second time, it comes louder, “Let go of me, Erik. We’ll talk tomorrow.”  
  
One of Erik’s hands jumps higher, curving to the bulge of Charles’ stomach. “Stay. We’ll sleep. That’s it. I give you my word.”  
  
Oh. That arrests the shove that had been coming—the sudden, concentrated attempt to seize Erik’s wrists and cast him aside. Erik’s word? That means something. The meaning in his oath is not precisely clear, or rather, _why_ he is making such an oath is only as clear as his desire is—that is to say, not very. A promise like that comes from a desire to have his bearer close, but the fervency behind it is inexplicable, and… slightly heartening. If Erik had to override his pride in order to obtain this concession, he may also be willing to make similar agreements in order to avoid losing his family completely.  
  
But… he’d told Erik not to touch him in the first place. What sort of message does it send, to allow his disregard time and again? Erik doesn’t respect him. He sees him as someone to be placated, to be cajoled into doing as bidden. At the heart of it, that must also be what this promise is.  
  
“No.”  
  
Erik tenses. “What?”  
  
This time, he follows through and latches onto Erik’s wrists, forcing them down and off him, and, in the time it takes Erik to recover, scrambling frantically on wet tile, Charles marches past him, tossing open the shower curtain, heedless of the water that sprays. Snagging a towel and his clothes on the way by, he slams open the bathroom door and hurries out into the room beyond, scrubbing the towel over himself as he goes, deafening his ears to Erik’s call.  
  
Trousers? There they are, right-side out, thankfully, and easy to pull on, and a shirt over that, all before Erik appears in the bathroom doorway, dripping wet, and completely naked. Worse is the stripped expression on his face, exposing his raw confusion.  
  
“Put some clothes on,” Charles murmurs. The overnight bag is off to the side of the room, but why bother taking it? There are more nightclothes in his rooms.  
  
“Charles—“  
  
“Don’t bother. We’ll talk tomorrow.”  
  
“You’re being ridiculous. It’s been _five months_. And you’re pregnant. Time and pregnancy… with the bond, you must be uncomfortable.”  
  
That’s putting it mildly. Erik has no idea precisely _how_ uncomfortable—and it isn’t all down to the bond. A biological draw isn’t everything. Genuine attachment and—call it what it is— _love_ is every bit as much a motivator. All of that combined easily sparked off a craving for Erik’s presence.  
  
But memory—as much as it’s fueled that attachment to Erik in the past—is an effective antidote. Captivity, repression—a recollection of any of those things cools the burning want, and though hormones might dictate that he wants Erik’s presence—curling up in the arms of one’s mate is a biological soothing agent, plain and simple—it’s manageable.  
  
Without looking back at Erik—a stunning physique is hardly going to help with walking out the door—he heads toward the exit, ignoring the shifting discomfort in his stomach. It would be easy to attribute that to the baby, but it would also be patently false. It’s only unease—the desire to stay by Erik’s side, rather than leaving.  
  
“ _Charles_.”  
  
He stops, hand on the door. “You don’t respect me,” he says slowly. The metal in front of his face is smooth, cold to the touch—and also an insufficient distraction. “Before, I couldn’t walk away from that. Now, though, I can. I _am_. You ought to have a good think on that and what it means.”  
  
Leaving the words settling down into the room behind him, he gives the door a few quick, hard raps—two quick, a pause, then three quick—and, at the sound of the pre-arranged signal, the guards drag it open. Erik doesn’t call after him when he slips out of the room. He doesn’t need to call. The shadow his thoughts cast reaches far beyond the doorway. Any verbal protest would be redundant.  
  
It isn’t until Charles is halfway up the stairs, heading upwards and out of the cells, that reality finally—what _does_ it do, exactly? The swell of emotion in his chest is overpowering, and it rushes into his muscles, taking a hold of his limbs and pressing them toward self-possession.  
  
Tomorrow might go horribly wrong, but, for tonight at least, Erik hasn’t set the terms. This is a choice. Stay, go; concede, refuse—but it isn’t Erik deciding.  
  
Walking away is little better than having the air sucked out of him, but the fact now remains: walking away is _possible_. He can crave Erik, can love him, but that doesn’t strip autonomy. It isn’t a life-sentence, to be served out in a gilded prison.  
  
This time, the choice is _his_.  
  
He can leave. He can look Erik in the face and leave. In leaving, he may ache, but it’s pain under control. Under _his_ control.  
  
To be eaten alive by his _own_ decisions is a burn that carves a smile into his face and hollows out his heart, springing open his eyes and burning them with held back tears. But… it’s good.  
  
It’s so good.  
  
And it’s _his._


	36. Chapter 36

Morning creeps up with cold light, spilling in through the window. It doesn’t take more than a quick glimpse out the diamond windowpanes to see that the sky is the color of dishwater, with a murky drizzle dampening the landscape.  
  
Charles has, at this point, been up for the better part of the hour.  
  
“Are you sure?”  
  
It’s only just now turning to proper daylight, but the world has never been especially respectful of his schedule or his preferences, and there was never any indication that such lack of luck would change. Just the same, after a night of tossing and turning and imaging how much easier it would be to sleep were Erik present, this isn’t an overly welcome wake-up call.  
  
Ororo nods. “As two of Lehnsherr’s highest ranking captured officials—and two guardians—it seemed logical for them to share a cell, since we were already lacking space.”  
  
He waves her off, though the motion aborts halfway through, and his hand ends up dropping to his forehead—and it’s bloody good that it does, when there’s already a headache coming on, and rubbing at his temples is the best option available. “I’m going to assume that, up until this point, she’s only slept with steriles?”  
  
He’s probably earned the wide-eyed wryness that Ororo turns his way. “I didn’t ask.”  
  
“Someone’s going to have to.”  
  
“Why? It doesn’t matter _now_.”  
  
“Because—“ Cutting himself off, he kneads at his forehead. It doesn’t do much to help: that persistent throb is here to stay. “No, you’re right. It doesn’t matter.” Why should it? This won’t change the negotiations, beyond having one fewer senior official of Erik’s to hold for ransom. Anything else is sentiment, and probably of the variety better left among the mud and smudges of a formerly beautiful valley that had the misfortune to be appropriated as a battlefield.  
  
There is _absolutely_ no reason why there’s a sick sense of satisfaction settling in his gut.  
  
But it’s _there_.  
  
He should be better than this. Saying there’s no cause to be satisfied—yes, fine, that’s a substantial lie, but it’s only bitterness that’s causing his satisfaction, and that won’t help anything.  
  
“You know,” Ororo begins slowly, taking the final few steps to his desk. She stops at the edge, placing her fingertips down on the surface; her nails clack on the surface. “You have a standing execution order—“  
  
“I know.”  
  
For once in their acquaintance, Erik’s meddling has simplified a difficult matter: executing one of Erik’s people would be a slap in the face to any manner of negotiation. Standing order or not, killing Raven is out of the question if there’s any hope for a peaceful resolution of the conflict that’s torn apart the known world.  
  
As logical as that may be—cold, hard fact—there’s a tingling down in his fingertips that feels a lot like relief, and which is decidedly _not_ logical.  
  
“You know what it would do for the negotiations, Ororo. The order doesn’t technically exist any longer anyway: Erik overruled it.”  
  
She stares down at her hands, tracing one fingertip along the edge of the desk. “You could easily reinstate it if you wanted to carry it through. Though, I don’t blame you for deciding otherwise. But you’re relieved—and it’s better that you acknowledge that. Denying what you’re feeling gives your opponents an advantage, if they find a way to drag it out into the light.”  
  
“Then thank the gods it’s raining.” A pathetic answer, really, but the stormy weather outside the window operates well enough as a distraction, or merely a way to avoid meeting Ororo’s eyes. “Leaving her to a bond is a worse punishment anyway,” he adds quietly—and the sheer cruelty of that statement rankles, but the words do ring true. “I don’t need to kill her to punish her.”  
  
“She’s denying it.” Ororo ducks her head and draws back, staring off toward the window also. “Refusing to accept that it’s reality.”  
  
“Well, it _is_ quite a shock, going from being a guardian your whole life to suddenly finding you’re a bearer.” Once, that wouldn’t have sounded quite so bitter. For now, though—think this through, find a solution, and try not to feel guilty. Easier said than done, when he’s about to pardon the woman who killed his wife. He may be condemning her to the strictest imprisonment possible, but even knowing that a pardon is the only way to arrange that—issuing the order still rankles. “ _I_ would know, after all.”  
  
Moira would understand, wouldn’t she? She’d know that this is a far more fitting punishment, and one that won’t derail the peace talks. She’d forgive him, surely. Wouldn’t she?  
  
 The right side of Ororo’s mouth jumps, but she doesn’t smile. “Maybe in the future you should make a rule about sleeping with your cellmate.”  
  
“Good thought, though I’d rather not think about it at all.”  
  
Wouldn’t that be a lovely world. Vanish this mess, pretend it never happened, and get on with the day. Reality is far starker: the sun is up, and, as Ororo has come to tell him, Raven has been settled in a cell of her own, away from Azazel, awaiting Charles’ judgment. As of yesterday, she was merely another prisoner, whose fate would be decided by the treaty meetings today. Her sentence as it was passed down four years ago now would have been under discussion in the negotiations.  
  
Instead, they’ll be discussing her bonding. Won’t Erik just be _thrilled_?  
  
Probably not. This will lose him one of his advisors—unless he’d like to reconsider his stance on bearers serving in the military, and if that hasn’t happened by now, Erik sure as hell isn’t going to bend the rules for Raven.  
  
“I’ll need to go hear her side of the story.”  
  
Ororo sighs, drawing her hand back and fiddling with the cuff of her sleeve. Unlike what Shaw had her wearing when the palace fell, she’s taken to wearing either shirts and trousers, or, as is the case today, long, loose-fitting dresses of great modesty that emphasize her natural air of dignity and present her as statuesque and almost priestess-like. “I don’t think there’s much to tell.”  
  
That’s where she’s wrong: there’s likely the equivalent of a novel’s worth of details, most of which he doesn’t want to hear, some of which could trigger flashbacks—they’ll do to Raven what they did to him, what _she_ did to him, and justice demands that he _cannot_ stop it. Being her older brother dictates that he should save her. And being only human, and vulnerable to bitterness, ensures that he’s subject to a disgusting feeling of justification. Call it satisfaction. Of all the things he didn’t need when he already has Erik to contend with….  
  
Getting it over with is about the only option at this point, unless he plans to hide here until the treaty meetings. That’s hardly a solid plan either, when one considers that this will have to be revealed to Erik, and doing that with anything less than all the information risks putting himself at a severe disadvantage.  
  
“I need to talk to her,” he admits.  
  
Need is a funny thing: it exists for so many reasons. Tactical, emotional—there’s a conglomeration of mixed motivations at work here, but taking the time to untangle them now would be a pointless hassle. Ororo may very well be able to read his own emotions more objectively anyway—and that would explain the pitying, unblinking stare that she follows him with when he rises from his desk chair and pushes it in, heading for the door.  
  
“Some things just don’t make sense, Charles,” she calls after him.  
  
A great many things, actually. But this case ought not to be one of them. Knowing  Ororo, though, she has a valid point, and that’s cause enough to pause at the doorway, waiting on her words.  
  
“You’re expecting her to be able to reconcile her points of view. If you’re going down there hoping that she’ll finally have learned to understand you, you’re going to be disappointed. There will always be another excuse about why you’re situation is different, and it doesn’t matter how she justifies exempting herself from the laws she subjected you to—she won’t see that what’s she’s done to you was wrong.”  
  
His hand hovers over the doorknob. “Is that your way of telling me that I shouldn’t ask for her version of events?”  
  
“No. That’s my way of telling you not to base your healing on whether or not your sister admits the wrong she’s done you. Moving past the damage may be easier if the transgressor has repented, but it’s a rare case when that happens. As long as you judge yourself based on your ability to convince her of the flaws in her point of view, you’ll be giving her sway over you. Don’t offer her that power.”  
  
In the end, it always comes back to power. Who has it, how it’s used—and the most innocuous interactions are steeped in it. A movement as simple as nodding to Ororo, and staying blank-faced and tight-lipped—it couches itself in potential power. She’s given her opinion, and whether he chooses to heed it or not tips a balance. To take another’s opinion gives them power.  
  
Erik has done this: he’s painted the world in pictures of power, and everything is tainted by the colors. That trust that once came so easily is now a fleeting, hard-won decision to give others the benefit of the doubt.  
  
“I… will keep that in mind,” he tells Ororo, though when he drops his face away from her stare and turns back toward the door, the warning is already morphing and taking on a life of its own.  
  
Raven won’t acknowledge what she’s done: is there truly no chance of that? Surely Ororo might have been mistaken? If Raven has found herself bonded, she _must_ understand the agony of losing everything in one single spark of chemistry.  
  
And if she doesn’t?  
  
As he descends the stairs, the elegant wood paneling of the hallways disappears, tapering off into concrete wall. The Danger Room, they’d once called this place. Once, the plans show that it had all been one large room, but, under the direction of the kings of Westchester, it has long ago been expanded and turned to cells.  
  
It was never supposed to hold the girl who should have been—who _was_ —Westchester’s princess.  
  
“Supposed to” is becoming an increasingly unreliable indicator of what will be, it would seem.  
  
Once the stairs level out into a flat floor, Armando comes into view. He’s seated in a chair at the entrance to the line of cell doors. The first one o  the left is Erik’s, but, for once, this _isn’t_ about Erik. Damn it, though, there’s no hope of walking by that door without at least flicking a glance toward it.  
  
Armando thankfully doesn’t comment, though he does stand to make his address properly. “My Lord.”  
  
Armando never took the time to salute him before, but… it’s really rather kind of him, throwing in the gesture now as a reassurance and recognition of status. “At ease.” No reason to keep this formal. “What happened?”  
  
Armando scowls, though he’s too controlled to allow that expression to do much more than tug at his lips. “It was a double cell, and, given that neither of them was believed to be a bearer, we assumed it would be safe to put them together.”  
  
A sensible enough assessment, and exactly as Ororo said, which is not surprising. “Understandable.”  
  
“Early this morning we heard screaming. We opened the cell with the expectation that we would have to break up a fight, only to find her naked and pressed into a corner and screaming at him to keep away. By the looks of him, he was half tempted to try his luck at getting closer, and overall too shocked to consider moving. It mostly resulted in a clumsy bout of swaying, until the guards pulled him away for questioning. According to him, they sparked a bond. Preliminary blood work confirms this.”  
  
“She’s a bearer.” It’s a statement, not a question. But it doesn’t make _sense_. With all her shifting, bearing a child would be dangerous, especially lethal for the child. Granted, when she was tested at birth, her blood work came back showing that she had the capability to bear, but when she’d gotten old enough to control her shifting, she’d effortlessly been able to morph that aspect of her physiology into something else. Essentially, Raven was able to choose her sex—and it had appeared as though what she’d chosen had become her default form. For her to suddenly bond… Stranger things have happened, yes, but it would indicate that she’d dropped her guard fully, relaxing to the point where she allowed her body to fully revert to something she hasn’t been in year.  
  
She’d stopped relaxing to that extent with Charles at the age of six. If she’d done it with anyone after that, she never mentioned it. In fact, she’d always led him to believe that she had actually shifted her physiology permanently.  
  
It doesn’t matter. She’d never owed him the right to expect that ease, but—if not her own brother, why trust someone else? What was it about Azazel that prompted her to do that?  
  
Raven is—she is—  
  
Growing up together, doing every single godsdamned thing to make her life easier, and she’d tucked her true self away for all of that, and left him alone to cope with being a bearer, when she could have tried to understand….  
  
But she _won’t_ understand. Ororo is right. She probably convinced herself she truly was a guardian. And there’s no help to be had in nursing the wound caused by her lack of trust.  
  
“I need to speak with her.”  
  
To Armando’s credit, he doesn’t voice the skepticism that he must surely be experiencing. His face is carefully blank—too blank for it to be unintentional—but instead of commenting he simply plucks a key out of his pocket and goes to the door, sticking it in the lock and turning it. “Sir.”  
  
“I’m ready.”  
  
“Ready” mostly means prepared to grab Raven should she try to rush out past him. It’s a possibility, but, for whatever reason, his gut protests that she won’t try it. Running wouldn’t solve her current problems: she has nowhere to run _to_ , considering that Erik’s forces will be no more sympathetic than Westchester when it comes to finding that she’s a bearer.  
  
One step into the cell—door quickly locked and secured behind him—is enough to confirm those suspicions. The crumpled form on the bed hardly acknowledges him when he enters, with the exception of drawing her knees up closer to her chest.  
  
Despite everything, it’s sickening. Once upon a time, he would have done anything to stop her from hurting like this.  
  
“Are you here to gloat?”  
  
As fair as that would be… no. “Did you complete the bond?”  
  
She shivers. “Yes.”  
  
Not a pull with the strength of his and Erik’s, then, if it only sparked during actual intercourse. Or, that’s the assumption: if they’d imprinted before sex, there’s no chance that Raven would have assented to completing the bond. Plus, an imprint during sex would explain her nudity during her reaction.  
  
“He wants to see you.”  
  
As would any newly-bonded guardian.  
  
It’s the mention of Azazel that finally prompts her to uncurl and to face him head-on. Her knees were almost preferable: the curdling bitterness in her gaze is physical to look upon. Even the blue of her skin seems washed out, slightly sickly, and it can’t all be blamed on the lighting, though that’s doing her no favors either. “No. This is all a mistake, and—“  
  
“Can you change back?”  
  
She stops. “What?”  
  
“If I’m not mistaken, when you were at your most vulnerable—during sex—you lost control and reverted to your original form. And, despite what you’ve spent years convincing yourself of, that original form is a bearing form. So, I want to know: can you change your physiology back to one that won’t accept a bond?”  
  
“I—it doesn’t matter!” That’s a “no”, then—and she’s without a doubt being trying. “I can’t carry a child to term. I’m not a _bearer._ ” The _not like you_ goes unsaid, but it’s plenty clear enough all the same.  
  
“You’re an interesting case, I’ll give you that. But, as I’m sure you’re well aware, the ability to bond is connected to fertility: presumably, then, you _can_ conceive, or you could at one point in time.” A person doesn’t stop being a bearer simply because he or she becomes barren. If the ability to bear is there originally, then a person will have the capacity to form a bond, regardless of whether he or she loses that capability—injury, disease, whatever—before puberty. Raven had appeared to be an exception to this on account of her mutation. When she'd manifested and been tested again, she'd appeared to have become a guardian, but… evidently not. Perhaps she convinced herself that her default form truly had become that of a guardian. Perhaps she'd lied. He may never know.  
  
“That—it’s a mistake!” She’s nearly shouting by this point, leaning forward onto her knees, hands braced on the mattress. It dips under her, bowing down and threatening to dump her on the floor when she leans closer to the edge.  
  
“Funny, that’s what _I_ said when I bonded. But I don’t recall you allowing me the benefit of such reasoning.”  
  
If he’d slapped her, she couldn’t have looked any more shocked. Her jaw falls open, and she blinks owlishly: with the dimness of the room and the darkness of her skin, her eyes seem almost disembodied, hanging in the air like the golden flames of two lanterns held in either fist.  
  
“I always told you that biology shouldn’t determine whether I was suitable to lead. And now, you, a bearer, have lived your life thus far as a guardian, and no one—yourself included—noticed. I’ve always told you, there’s no difference in bearers’ and guardians’ abilities to lead. This should show you that. But I doubt it will.”  
  
“It _isn’t_ the same!”  
  
Doubt or not, it isn’t pleasant to be disappointed. Despite Ororo’s warning, there was always the hope that Raven might see sense. If she had, they could have—  
  
What? What could they have done? If she’d seen why she was wrong, could they have reverted to the closeness they’d shared earlier in life? Is that what this is about?  
  
That closeness is gone. Too much has passed between them.  
  
Now, even if she’d asked for forgiveness, Moira’s blood is on her hands. There’s a corpse between them, and that’s a horribly effective barrier. There are years of prejudice, and the memory of her essentially handing him over to Erik, gift-wrapped and unable to run.  
  
Whatever they had, it is _over._ Brother and sister they may be, but there’s no typical sibling closeness of which to speak.  
  
“No,” he agrees quietly, pushing his hands down into his pockets. “It never _is_ the same—not when you’re experiencing it yourself.”  
  
To her credit, she isn’t so off-balance as to miss the wry nature of that statement. That doesn’t mean she appreciates it: she tips to the side, landing on her hip; she sets her jaw and slices her stare through the distance between them. At this point, it’s about the only thing that could cross that distance. “I never wanted to hurt you, Charles.”  
  
No? The tone of her voice sounds very much as though she’d currently take great pleasure in hitting him across the face.  
  
But Raven isn’t done: “Moira was a human. We never should have taken her on campaign with us in the first place, and even when she botched that transmission, I knew—you were going to forgive her, and you’d marry her, and nothing would get better. I’d still have to watch my back walking down the street if I were wearing my real skin, and you’d be terrified of yourself and what you really are, and the both of us together would end up hating each other. If you were going to hate me, I wanted it to be for something useful.”  
  
Gods, the _sickness_ of that. “And you thought killing my wife was _useful_?”  
  
She snorts disdainfully. “Erik was already your mate. I knew you’d hate me for killing her, but, eventually, once you’d adapted to the life you should have been living all along, I thought you would forgive me. You would have been happier, not having to deny yourself.”  
  
Deny himself? No. Erik denied him well enough for both of them. “I was _miserable_.”  
  
“Eventually—“  
  
“It wouldn’t have changed.” A pool of spit has gathered in his mouth, prompted by a sudden bout of nausea—just the situation. The morning sickness finished months ago—but he swallows the spit down as he steps forward into the center of the room. “I wouldn’t have chosen to condemn you to the same fate to which you condemned me, Raven. No one deserves this. But now that you’ve put yourself in this situation, I’m sure as hell not going to help you out of it.”  
  
The time is long past when that would have been thinkable. There’s no telling how Erik will handle this, but if Erik is given proof that Raven has truly bonded, there’s no reason to think he’d be anything but accepting of that. It will also be a matter of consulting Azazel, and that will be more Erik’s affair than Westchester’s. Under the control of a bearer king, Westchester is hardly about to begin enforcing bearer customs—but Erik, if he wants to retain any credibility in light of his own actions, will have to enforce those customs for his own people. Raven threw in her lot with him, and now she’s under his jurisdiction: she will need to follow Erik’s rules, as they’ve been so flagrantly laid out for the world to see on account of Erik’s own bonding—on account of the bonding that _Raven_ assisted him in completing.  
  
If Raven had never killed Moira…  
  
If Erik had never wanted his bondmate back…  
  
If Raven hadn’t helped Erik…  
  
If those things hadn’t happened, Raven might now be facing a very different verdict.  
But at this point she has to live with what she helped make happen.  
  
“You should take care,” he murmurs. “You could be pregnant.”  
  
If she isn’t yet, she will be soon. It remains to be seen how and if she can carry to term, but, still…  
  
Rippling, her skin feathers black and wavers into the paleness of her blond form. The change does nothing to ease back on the ferocity in her face, and she can’t quite seem to smother her natural form completely: her eyes fade back to their natural bright yellow. “You think any baby would survive _that_?”  
  
Gods only know. “I think it’s no longer my affair. None of this is. You’re under Erik’s jurisdiction. It is _Erik_ whom you will have to convince.”  
  
Staying in her natural form might have been the wiser option: she pales more noticeably with pale skin, and while it isn’t an actual shift, the sudden pallor of her skin is so stark as to seem a different form completely.  
  
“Perhaps you should ask yourself why that thought disturbs you,” he tells her faintly, though he’s already stepping back and toward the door. Staying any longer would be an exercise in futility, and already she’s winding up toward a rant. “After all, you condemned _me_ to a life under his jurisdiction.”  
  
The door opens the moment he knocks: thankfully, when she’s already halfway through the beginning of some sort of explanation. More assertions that her situation is different from his? There’s been enough of that already.  
  
This morning, salvation sounds a lot like a door slamming shut.  
  
“My Lord?”  
  
And Armando, as ever, is courteous to the last. “I’m all right.” Armando probably has sufficient reason to worry, though. It can’t look too good, the king propping himself against the wall, eyes closed and head tilted back, face angled toward the ceiling.  
  
“With all due respect, Sir, no one expects you to be.”  
  
No. They all expect him to crumble, to fold like the bearer he is. That’s been rather well established. They’re like a pack of piranhas, out for blood… and childbirth. “I don’t make it a practice of giving into expectations, Armando.”  
  
“That wasn’t what I meant, Sir.”  
  
Actually looking at Armando isn’t a necessity when he sounds this clear: honest, but worried, and a bit consternated. One doesn’t need an expression to confirm any of that. Let it never be said that the citizens of Westchester are afraid to make their opinions known.  
  
“Oh?”  
  
“ _We_ —those of us who have been with you from the start—don’t expect perfection from you. After what you’ve experienced, you’ll have bad days. Anyone would. It doesn’t make you weak.”  
  
Doesn’t— _oh_. Don’t choke, and don’t look at Armando either, when that would really be terribly revealing. That doesn’t hurt, hearing Armando say that. Or… it’s a good sort of hurt, the kind that warms a person’s insides, even if it singes them a little too, when that warmth is combined with a more painful brand of memory.  
  
“I appreciate your loyalty,” he finally pushes past the clog in throat. “Truly, I do. That you’ve stood by me, when so few others would have…”  
  
When so few others _have_.  
  
Armando folds his arms across his chest and shakes his head, scuffing one foot against the ground. The distraction is a welcome place to look: better for both of them than making eye contact. “Where else were we going to go? You weren’t the only one who felt that things weren’t right, but you’re the only one who’s been strong enough to say so.”  
  
“I don’t feel very strong _right now_.”  
  
There’s an odd manner of freedom in unburdening himself to Armando. They’ve always been on good terms, shaped within the parameters of ruler and subject, but with leeway for convivial conversation. Nothing like this, though. That’s too bad: hearing this from Armando is a reassurance that nothing else thus far has been.  
  
Why? Because Armando doesn’t _have_ to serve him. His interests aren’t vested in his king, as is the case with Frost or Ororo, or with any of the bearers who support him. Armando is a guardian. And yet, _and yet…_  
  
Armando shrugs. “Like I said, Sir. No one expects you to be strong constantly. It’s enough that you try. And from what I can tell? In the past, that’s always gotten the job done.”  
  
Gods above. No one should have this much faith in him. Not when he’s failed, again and again and again. Erik worked him over, and—bloody hell, loving Erik isn’t going to stop. It should—how can anyone possibly trust him to run this region while Erik is always a specter that haunts relations? If today’s negotiations go as they should, he always will be. Raven too. Everything. And there will be another child…  
  
“I’ll give it my best,” he promises, pushing up and away from the wall. Damned weak knees, and now that the morning sickness has passed, there’s no good excuse. It’s only nerves, amplified by stress.  
  
Armando nods. “Your best, Sir, will be good enough.”


	37. Chapter 37

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Everyone should take a second to go check out the truly stunning artwork that palalife made for this story: http://palalife.tumblr.com/post/97198883578/tuesday-plays-the-piper-by-sperare-larger-and
> 
> I cannot express how much I love this! Artwork for the story! Yipee!

Erik is not a man who is meant to be restrained.  
  
Restraints don’t sit comfortably on him. There is a gnawing uneasiness in looking at him with his hands cuffed in front of him, the chain hooking down onto his belt and locking his hands at waist level. Witnessing that is uncomfortable: Erik holds himself with dignity, but, in doing so, he projects the fault outward, striking anyone in near distance with a measure of guilt for allowing this to come to pass.  
  
At least, it feels that way. Possibly, that’s only due to what sits between him and Erik. It’s difficult, though, to prevent himself from feeling guilty for doing this, not because Erik doesn’t deserve it, but because… it’s _Erik_. Even if this was what had to happen, Erik is still someone whom he loves.   
  
As soon as he draws near enough to the table, Bobby—picked to attend due to his relative neutrality, having never been imprisoned in Genosha—pulls a chair out. Erik’s gaze slides down him, taking in his measure, but he keeps silent, a slight smirk the only indication that he’s found anything wanting in Bobby.  
  
Knowing Erik, he considers the entirety of Westchester’s army deficient. After all, they are willingly following a bearer as their head of state.  
  
People have, according to the Church, been condemned to Hell for less.  
  
“Thank you for coming.”  
  
For a treaty meeting that will alter the lives of millions, the circumstances are decidedly underwhelming. He and Erik, seated across the table from each other, Ororo on one end, and Frost on the other. Bobby, who has escorted Erik into the room, takes his place next to Sean over beside the door. There are more men outside the doors, and Logan was allowed in to have a word with Erik this morning, but, beyond that, there’s very little fanfare involved.  
  
At the greeting, Erik’s lips twitch, thinning out. But, as he cocks his head, the anger sluices off and leaves bitterness in its place. A good dose of self-control smothers it, of course, but when Erik looks over at him with solemn eyes, that bitterness lurks in the color of his irises, darkening the greenish-blue to a colder shade, more like a frozen ocean. “I could hardly refuse, could I?”  
  
Swallowing down the first retort that pops to mind—not a nice one—Charles folds his hands in front of himself on the table and forces his tone to stay even. “Of course you could have. It would have meant you remained a prisoner, but you absolutely could have refused to bargain with me.”  
  
Granted, it would have ripped the regions apart in the wake of the power vacuum that Erik’s deposition from the throne would have caused, but Erik has, in the past, proven himself quite capable of bringing down thousands if that’s what the situation calls for. Not _all_ of Shaw’s men were guilty, after all.  
  
Some were, quite honestly, only following orders.  
  
“Is that what we’re doing? Bargaining?”  
  
Of all the people to attempt a treaty with Erik, he may very well be the least well-equipped for this business. Erik will never take him seriously… and, in this case, that may have more to do with _whose_ baby he’s carrying, rather than the fact that he _can_ carry one.  
  
That doesn’t mean he’s going to allow Erik the liberty to disrespect him.  
  
Drawing up a little straighter, he ignores the twinge of protest in his back—a cushion might have been a good idea, but too late now—and nods. “We need to come to an accord, so, yes.”  
  
“An accord? I can’t imagine that we’ll possibly reach an accord if you’re wearing _that_ on your head.”  
  
That complaint isn’t exactly unexpected. After last night, there’s no doubting Erik’s attitude toward the inhibitor, and… in some ways, he’s right. Bargaining with your mate when the bond is blocked does hit a frequency of wrong that operates as constant background noise. It’s never possible to completely ignore, but in a situation where everyone’s minds are focused on the authenticity of the opposing side’s words, it’s particularly bad: just continuous scraping at a locked door in hope that eventually it will open.  
  
“Then I suppose we’d better reach an accord on _that_ first.” There’s nothing like a promise to grab Erik’s attention: his eyes pulse with energy, and though he doesn’t physically straighten up, the intensity in his posture radiates outward. “I’m willing to remove the inhibitor with the understanding that Miss Frost will be monitoring the outer layers of my mind. If at any point you attempt to reach for my telepathy, she will interfere—and, as we’ve already discussed previously, you might be able to kick her out eventually, but getting the inhibitor back on in that time wouldn’t be especially difficult.”  
  
Despite the storm cloud expression on Erik’s face, and the way he viciously glances at Frost, he nods. “I won’t touch your telepathy. However, I make no such promises about telepathic exchanges. I want to hear your thoughts, see your memories, if they’re relevant to what we’re discussing.”  
  
No surprise there. Ororo and Frost remain motionless, backs ramrod straight against their chairs: they hardly need to speak to express their misgivings, when it’s so written in their posture. If a person hadn’t experienced it, they’d never understand this tension that permeates every inch of a negotiation. War is bloody and deadly, but it’s easier than this: you can lose yourself to the rhythm of attack on a battlefield. Lose yourself in negotiation, and your opponent will best you in a matter of minutes.  
  
Ororo meets his eyes when he spares her a quick look. She doesn’t nod, doesn’t speak, but there’s a serenity in her eyes that’s out of place in the circumstance as a whole, but which works perfectly as permission. This may not be the best way to start out a negotiation, but it’s good to know she’s on board with this small concession.  
  
“I’ll assent to that,” he agrees slowly, rolling the words over his tongue. Erik notices, eyes flickering downward—and it’s rather disconcerting, knowing Erik is staring at his mouth.  
  
Next step, then: the inhibitor needs to go. That’s no simple thing when it’s quite literally affixed to his head. Growing the hair out had been irritating at first, but by the time it was long enough to easily braid about the inhibitor it had actually become easier, not having to worry about his hair overmuch. It’s a bit of a mess now, hanging just above the shoulder. Erik never would have stood for the tangled rat’s nest that it is at present. If last night had gone differently, Erik might have liked to have a go at combing it out.  
  
“You’re compromising your objectivity.”  
  
How wonderful: Emma has finally gotten around to her objections, and, as might be expected, she’s cut-glass about it, infusing her tone with all the condescension and irritation that she can manage. The thing is, though—fuck, he doesn’t want to work with her, but she _isn’t_ wrong.  
  
“I was never objective to begin with.”  
  
Pursing her lips, she eyes him with disdain. A mild form, but, still, disdain. “We’re _all_ aware of that, Xavier. And I’m suggesting you don’t make it worse.”  
  
“And _I_ am suggesting that you cease believing you can control my actions. Or do you have another decoy you’d like to hand to me?”  
  
Her nails bite down into the edge of the table. But… she stays silent.  
  
His lips twitch. “Good. If we can crack on then: Ororo, may I borrow your knife?”  
  
Time for a hair cut, apparently. This wasn’t exactly the plan for how it ought to go, but with the back tied all up in the metal, there’s not much to do but sever the locks and pull the inhibitor away. Ororo doesn’t protest, and while Erik emits a noise of vague discontent, he must realize he’s getting a payoff that’s fully worth the price of a shoddy haircut.  
  
Doing this fast is the best option. Slow, and there will be time to think about what’s about to push up against the bond. Nine months of a closed-off bond, and, after a few quick tugs-and-slices, everything is going to rush back. Erik, and all the thoughts and emotions that have been blocked off. All the memories.  
  
He slices through the hair before he can think better of it.  
  
A deal is a deal: call it a show of good faith, giving this to Erik. Or, call it tactics: the bond goes two ways. This means seeing _Erik’s_ thoughts too.  
  
More importantly, feeling Erik’s emotions.  
  
The second the circlet is set aside on the table, the emotions surge upward: they’ve been blocked this entire time, held back on their respective ends of the bond, and now they gush together, mingling and caressing up against each other. Hello, hello, I’ve missed you, your mind is beautiful—and it’s good, astounding, enough that—oh, his tiny choking noises match Erik’s sharp curse, with the two of them mingling together again.  
  
 _[I’ve missed you.]_  
  
Don’t look at Erik. Hearing Erik declare that—it was common knowledge already, and it shouldn’t feel like a treat to hear it said inside the mental plane, where it can resonate with emotion and sincerity.  
  
Pushing back toward Erik’s declaration is tempting, but, ultimately, words are unnecessary: a quick pulse of acknowledgement does the trick and eases the worst of hypertension out of Erik, until he can at least settle minimally down into his seat, although the handcuffs do make it difficult.  
  
Ororo is the one who presses for continuation: “Having made that concession—“  
  
Erik turns on her with concentrated irritation. “A moment,” he snaps. “He is my _bonded_ , and I haven’t felt him in months. I hardly think it’s too much to ask to have a moment to acclimate.”  
  
It isn’t so much acclimation as it is a bizarre indulgence. Erik’s mind is… solid. Warm and safe and impenetrable to anyone but his mate. Erik’s mind is so delightfully ordered, and it’s a comfort to experience the sense of him bumping up along their link.  
  
Even with an inhibitor, the bond hadn’t been _gone_. The physical part of it—all the hormones that had been triggered by mating—were all still there. He’d wanted Erik, and pregnancy has thus far been hell, with the dearth of Erik’s presence, as enhanced by the bond. None of that had gone away. But the mental link—having Erik’s most intimate essence hovering up between their minds… that has been denied for months until this moment.  
  
The temptation to luxuriate in that is almost overwhelming, but if they can hurry things along here, any experience of the bond can be done in private. It isn’t worth it to indulge right this moment. “Let’s go ahead and press forward.”  
  
The expected twinge of displeasure echoes down along the bond. It would have been wise to look into that earlier: are they back to a state where the bond hasn’t settled, and they’ll be able to feel each other’s emotions for a few days? It seems likely, given how badly they’ve disrupted the bond as of late.  
  
“Ororo?” he prompts, nodding for her to continue.  
  
She smoothes her hands out over the folder in front of her, running her eyes over a few lines of print down on the page. She’d printed a list of demands. Good of her to do so, actually: with any luck, it will keep them on task.  
  
“The freedom of the North is non-negotiable,” she tells Erik.  
  
Not many people would have the fortitude to stare Erik straight in the eye and say that. That Ororo does—it’s remarkable, and it says wonderful things about her. That strength, in how she remains unaffected despite Erik’s unabashed attempts at intimidation.  
  
Erik hums thoughtfully. “The way I see it, that’s true for now. Two years from now? Not necessarily. I’ve lost this battle today, but what’s to stop me from trying again?”  
  
Which is really the ultimate definition of Erik’s mode of thought. His tenacity is admirable, if misplaced, but it’s going to make negotiation unnecessarily difficult.  
  
This needs to be dealt with now, then. “Me,” he says as calmly as he can, notwithstanding the anger bubbling up in his chest. “ _I_ will stop you.”  
  
In a fit of whipcord motion, Erik’s snaps his face back around into a position where he can stare straight across the table. Ororo is momentarily forgotten. “You’re prepared to fight this battle _again_ , Charles?”  
  
Gods almighty, _no_. “Absolutely not. That’s why we’re here: to make sure we don’t have to.”  
  
“Oh?” A wry smile, though Erik has not yet relaxed. “I thought we were here to negotiate your status.”  
  
“Among other things.”  
  
Almost a year ago now, he’d sat in a tent with Ororo and Emma Frost, discussing who would rule the nations in the event that Erik could be deposed. The same problems that loomed then are equally as true now: there’s very little chance that the regions will accept a bearer as regent until David is of age, unless his rule is linked to that of a guardian’s.  
  
At the time, there was no way around that. Impossible, yes?  
  
And, so, the real cause for these negotiations: to overturn the impossible.  
  
“If you leave the border where it currently is—at Westchester—I’m prepared to allow you to claim our child as your heir.”  
  
Figures that _this_ is the way to grab Erik’s attention. The skin around his eyes pulls back, exposing more of his irises, and when his face catches the light just so, the color nearly swallows the black of the pupil. “I know you,” Erik murmurs, hardly breathing from the looks of it. “You’d never allow me to take our child away from you to raise.”  
  
“I didn’t say I’d let you raise him: I said I’d allow you to claim him as your heir.”  
  
One quick blink, followed by a slow, bitter smile. “You’re losing your edge: that’s awfully transparent, _Liebling._ You raise our child, and he takes over as my heir: you’ll have my kingdom ruled by someone trained to adopt your philosophy.”  
  
“On the contrary.” This was always going to be difficult, but being condescended to is far harder than being derided—and Erik still, after everything, has yet to accept the reality of this situation. That’s clear from the expression he’s wearing now. If these negotiations can’t break through that, then what’s left to try? “I’d rather our child be allowed to _chose._ I won’t stop you from sharing your opinion with him—and you won’t stop _me_ from sharing _mine_.”  
  
Erik blinks, but… there’s a shred of hope there, and he leans in a little, cocking his head slightly to the side. “Implying I’ll have access to the child?”  
  
“That depends entirely on you and the agreement we make here today.”  
  
Off to the side, Frost huffs, half a snort, really. “Sorry, boys, but I’m not waiting all day for the two of you to dance around each other. Cut to the heart of this mess, and then maybe we can make it out of here at a decent hour.” She lolls her head in Erik’s direction, propping it on the palm of her hand, supported by the stanchion of her elbow against the desk. “Shaw was an asshole, but he was an effective one: too many people in this world won’t follow a bearer. Charles can’t hold Westchester without your backing.” Upon seeing the satisfied curl of Erik’s lips, she scoffs, rolling her eyes. “And _you_ , Lehnsherr: _you_ have to play nice with your husband and his stipulations if you want any chance of ever seeing him again in more than a formal capacity.”  
  
 _[And we all know how good you are at separating business from pleasure, don’t we, Charles?]_  
  
Erik. It’s taken him, what, all of two minutes to capitalize on the private line that their bond offers? Doesn’t make the question any less valid, though. It certainly doesn’t make the answer any less damning. Because, really? Neither of them are any good at separating the personal from business. No use denying that. _[I take your point.]_ He sends back in Erik’s direction, keeping his facial muscles carefully blank. He may not entirely succeed, judging from the speculative glance Frost rakes over him, but at least she can’t prove anything. _[But I think you’d also agree that, lapse of judgment aside, I was able to walk away from you after, yes?]_  
  
And this time the reply comes in a wordless spasm of anger. That, and—  
  
Fuck.  
  
Not a good idea opening back up the bond. Not if—Erik—he’s throwing a memory up into both their minds, damn him. Not invading, not forcing, but it’s essentially the same as being told not to think about breathing: the suggestion alone is enough to trigger a thorough examination.  
  
 _[“I’ve missed you. Come home. Charles, please... Do you want a repeat of the last war? Do you want—“_  
  
 _“I want_ _you to—“ But Charles breaks off his speech and backs away, turning on his heel. Charles ought to know better. Presenting his back to an opponent like this? So sloppy. But… does that mean Charles doesn’t see him as an opponent?_  
  
 _No, that isn’t it. Little chance of that when the whole point of this treaty meeting is for Charles to try to talk him out of war. Fine. That’s good. That’s what they both want. No war. If Charles only stops this foolishness and comes home, they can put this behind them. It’s been four months since Charles strangled him into unconsciousness and ran for the Upper North, nearly two months since Charles was able to rally troops and push back into Westchester, and one month since Charles officially took the city._  
  
 _Enough is enough._  
  
 _And for godsake—it’s been beyond difficult, being cut off from the bond, countering each of Charles’ moves, fighting for something that’s already been won, if only Charles would acknowledge it._  
  
 _And that damn inhibitor, twined around Charles’ head…._  
  
 _Gods, look at it, tangled up in Charles’ hair—and that_ mess _of his hair, where it’s grown out, as though he couldn’t be bothered to look after it. Has he even combed it? Doesn’t appear so. But… he’s still beautiful. Perfect. He’s_ Charles. _They’ll make this work, no matter how long it takes for Charles to understand exactly how foolish he’s being. After all the—_  
  
 _But thinking on past wrongs—regardless of whether they involve a bout of assault that left the King of Genosha unconscious on the floor—won’t help bring Charles home. It’s utter ridiculousness that assault is a concern in the first place, but now that it_ is _, the only option is to move beyond this. Charles doesn’t understand. Not yet. So, get him home, and help him to understand. A few months have proved not to be enough for that, but the years will teach Charles where months did not. Some time with David, and a new baby, time together as a family, and once Charles gets it out of his mind that he has to rule_ Westchester _in order to make a difference, thing will smooth out. He’ll be cured of such foolish notions when he sees the impact that he can make from Genosha as a king’s bonded._  
  
 _For the moment, though, Charles requires all attention. This is a man who can turn his opponents inside out of their own minds, and lead them into traps before they realize the fight has begun. Charles may think that was forgotten in the wake of their marriage, but that genius is the kind of thing that ought to be used—and that_ can _be used, once Charles understands that they should be using it_ together.  
  
 _Yes, together. And it’s been_ months. _It took so tortuously long to arrange this damn meeting, and now that they have, Charles wants to bargain, and—godsdamn it, if they’re going to bargain, they need to work a little of the tension off first. They’ll never get anywhere like this._  
  
 _Charles is too beautiful, and it’s been too long._  
  
 _The tent isn’t overly large, and it’s a matter of a few steps to bridge the gap between them, and to dart a hand out and grab Charles’ wrist—the one with the mark. Charles freezes, shocked—and always,_ always _damnably skittish—but that’s actually helpful: it offers time to shimmy the coat sleeve up Charles’ wrist, high enough to close fingers over skin and revel in the raised lines of the bond mark._  
  
 _Yes._ This _. Charles is worth every bit of this effort, everything it took to get this mark on him, when it means Charles is his_ husband. _He’ll come home, and they’ll_ fix _this, get on with running the country—and Charles can damn well help fix what he’s broken with this ridiculous rebellion. Didn’t he learn the first time? Hiding out in Westchester won’t do a thing in the long run._  
  
 _Charles can lead the reconciliation. But—not that he’ll be amenable, not when he still shivers under a touch to his mark, as the current situation is proving. It shouldn’t be like this. The mark isn’t meant to be a shame. Charles is_ his _, and safe because of it, slotted right in where he should be, as a bearer and the consort to the most powerful man in the world. The mark is affirmation of his elevated status, and also of the beauty that comes from being a bearer. He’s a bearer, and he’s powerful, and they’ll rule, the two of them together: the mark ought to mean all of that._  
  
 _But Charles is still shivering._  
  
 _That, and yanking away._  
  
 _“Is that it, Erik?” he snarls, tipping his head back and glaring. “Is that the price of negotiation? Sex before you’ll agree to talk?”_  
  
 _Well, it isn’t a bad_ start _._  
  
 _It’s a perfect start, actually, when Charles launches forward, latching his hands onto either side of Erik’s face and kissing him soundly, with enough force to bruise.]_  
  
“Charles?”  
  
Oh, gods, had he—? Yes. Erik is watching him with a wide-open stare, and both Ororo and Frost are eyeing him, albeit with vastly different levels of annoyance.  
  
“No, sorry.” It hurts, flashing them a weak smile, but if they realize what just happened, there’s a good chance things will derail. “I’m fine.”  
  
Fine enough to notice Erik’s too-pleased smirk. Though, it fades when he realizes precisely what Frost has said to him. “You expect me to offer you legitimacy? If you think I’m about to—“  
  
There was really never any hope that this would be a seamless effort. “I think,” he snaps, cutting Erik across, “that I’m offering you a deal. You can either stop patronizing me and think about what I’m telling you, or you can resign yourself to your right hand for the rest of your life. Understand?”  
  
There’s a fine line between understanding and shock, and Erik is straddling it. His lack of protest really can’t be taken for affirmation.  
  
Give him a few more seconds, though, and he’ll realize that Frost is chuckling to herself with undisguised amusement. If this negotiation is going to be kept from becoming a shouting match, it’s a good idea to reengage him before he comes to that realization.  
  
“We won’t ever be able to decide on how to rule together, Erik. So, appoint me regent over Westchester and the North, and leave me to run things as I please; I’ll leave you to do the same in the South.”  
  
“You want me to _condone_ what you’ve done?” Erik retorts, openly disgusted. Leaning back a few inches, he shakes his head, tightening up his lips and looking away—half collected, but mostly beyond his capability to play along, even for the sake of show. “You have undermined my rule in every way possible, and now you’re hoping that I will officially endorse your actions? You’re smarter than that, Charles. Don’t be absurd.”  
  
So much for hearing an offer out. Unfortunately for Erik, this time there’s no walking away. Every time prior, he’s been able to shut the conversation down. This? He can refuse to bargain, but he can’t refuse to hear what’s on the table. If he does, he’ll be spending the rest of his life alone in a cell.  
  
“In return, I would be willing to spend a certain amount of time each year in Genosha.”  
  
There. Let Erik ignore _that_.  
  
And he can’t. His head snaps back around, and he pushes his weight down on his hands, sparing a moment to check Ororo’s reaction—very telling that he doesn’t bother with Frost—before focusing in on Charles. “I _know_ you, Charles: you haven’t changed your mind about what it means to be a bearer. Until you change your mind about that, you won’t come willingly back to my side. I’ve always known that. I’ve always known that it will take time to change your perspective.”  
  
Ororo clears her throat: Erik ducks his head, acknowledging her, but his eyes dart back and forth, keeping Charles in his peripheral vision.  
  
“You aren’t listening to him,” Ororo tells him, and it’s remarkable, the level of patience that she possesses. Her voice is smooth and calm, strong, but trimmed down to an acceptable range of emotion. Her face too is wiped of any excessive feeling, and she stares back at Erik with wide, confident eyes.  
  
And why shouldn’t she? She’s stared down Shaw. When she’s looked at true evil, a misguided man isn’t half as intimidating.  
  
“He isn’t offering to change his perspective,” she tells Erik calmly. “What he’s offering is this: in exchange for the right to rule everything North of Westchester in the way that he sees fit—and with your political backing—he will join you in Genosha for an agreed-upon length of time every year. He will not attempt to influence the politics of Genosha. It’s a damn good offer, and it’s the best you’re going to get. Take it.”  
  
No nonsense. How very Ororo—as is the hint of steel and, yes, violence, that undergirds the words.  
  
A muscle in Erik’s jaw twitches. “And if I say no?”  
  
 _That_ is an answer to be given by Westchester’s king, not by Ororo or Frost, and he obliges: “Then I’ll have my guards escort you back down to the cells, where you’ll stay indefinitely.”  
  
That easily, the entirety of Erik’s focus is locked back in on _him_. It’s so fleeting: Frost and Ororo are only ever momentary distractions. “You won’t do that: you know as well as I do that Genosha would descend into civil war. You won’t be any better off: you’d constantly be fending off attacks from the South, in addition to attempts within your own kingdom: you know as well as I do that there will be a large contingent of your people who won’t suffer a bearer to sit unsupported upon the throne of Westchester.”  
  
Yes, that’s been the concern all along. “I _do_ know that.” But knowing and surrendering are two different things, and that’s enough to fuel him into locking his fingers together and setting his hands on the table, using them as support when he leans forward and peers up at Erik from under his lashes. “And I also know that _you_ want _me_ most of all. And I’m telling you: give me what I want—give me legitimacy and autonomy—and, in return, I’ll give you what _you_ want. I’ll walk out of this room prepared to make the world believe that we’ve reconciled, and that I’ve come to accept the idea of being bound to you. I’ll give the impression that you’ve indulged me and allowed me to keep my region, when you could have just as easily taken it from me. I don’t need dominance in the eyes of the public. I’ll make it look like I’m serving you. It _doesn’t matter to me_. As long as I have power where it counts—as long as I am allowed to make the decisions for all regions above Westchester.”  
  
“A little late for that, don’t you think? Everyone must know by now that I’m being held here. Wars are fairly conspicuous, Charles.”  
  
“I’ve made no announcement concerning your whereabouts. Agree to my terms, and I’ll inform the regions that you agreed to a ceasefire in order to negotiate a reconciliation.”  
  
“The soldiers saw—“  
  
“The soldiers don’t know _what_ they saw. They heard nothing we said. They only _think_ they know, but if we say otherwise loudly enough and for long enough, even they will begin to believe what we tell them. Haven’t you learned that much from the last three hundred years? A lie repeated often and at great volume quickly becomes the truth.”  
  
Erik’s expression flickers. But, more than that—  
  
The memory, again, and—  
  
 _[Charles isn’t kind in how he kisses. He’s raw, clashing their teeth together and catching skin between them—and he’s bruising, mashing their mouths together with zero finesse. This isn’t skill, but it’s perfect, and it’s_ Charles _, invested and demanding and_ wanting.  
  
 _It’s Charles_ initiating.  
  
 _“You won’t drive a bargain with me unless I let you fuck me?” Charles snaps when he pulls back, burning the blue out of his eyes with black fire: his pupils widen and eat up the color._  
  
 _One good shove from Charles, and he stumbles back, but—this was never going to be easy, after months away. And Charles won’t control this. Not fully. That can’t happen. But it’s a bizarre dance, twisting hands into Charles’ jacket and sling-shotting him around, shoving him up against the center pole of the tent—the main stanchion—and diving back in for another kiss._  
  
 _Charles meets him willingly and eagerly, opening up his mouth and kissing back. It’s messy and badly done, but gods, gods—_  
  
 _“I don’t need a reason to want to fuck you,” he hisses against Charles’ neck. All that skin—and, lower, there’s muscles too, hidden under those clothes. Just—the clothing needs to go. Metal buttons, good, that’s good, and a good, strong yank, pulling Charles’ trousers and pants to his knees in one go. Charles toes off his shoes and then kicks both them and the clothes aside. “You—you’re mine,_ mine—“  
  
 _Charles’ isn’t pregnant already, mores’ the pity. He’s so good with David, and another child to love and cherish will only draw him further, tangling them into a family. A tiny piece of himself and Charles, a baby to play with David, a child to teach, to guide—David is that already, if Charles would only let him interact with the boy. But he’ll come around with another child made from the two of them._  
  
 _“Just like that—“ Getting a good grip on Charles’ backside, he massages at the muscle under his fingers, tugging Charles upward onto his tiptoes, and propping him against the pole. But Charles squirms, slipping to the side, and they tumble back in a mess of legs toward a desk at the edge of the room: it catches Charles behind his knees and bends him over until he collapses on his back, allowing Erik to bracket him in and kiss him senseless._  
  
 _Though, not senseless enough to stop him from, after a minute or so, getting a leg up between them, his foot in Erik’s gut, and pushing. That’s—ow, that_ hurts _, and he stumbles back a few steps before Charles is back on him, fisting a hand in his hair and toppling over against him, diving in for another kiss as his mouth. Their chests smack together hard enough to sting, but he takes Charles’ weight, spinning them around again and backing up until Charles is again up against the poll._  
  
 _“Come home, Charles,” he hisses out against Charles’ neck where he’s bared it, tipping his head back and thunking it against the pole, allowing easy access. His hands, though—he grips tightly against Erik’s shoulders, flexing his fingers and rolling out a few litanies of groans that are positively indecent._  
  
 _Anyone outside that tent is going to hear._  
  
 _Let them hear._  
  
 _Except… Charles won’t like that, and there’s no need to humiliate him._  
  
 _He slaps a hand down over Charles’ mouth, muffling those delicious noises. “I love you. I—“_  
  
 _Charles shoves him again. The movement is quick enough to find success, and, anyway, Charles is battle trained. He isn’t a pushover in a fight. Just because he isn’t a spectacular fighter is no reason to write him off—and no one would, if they saw him now, breathing hard and glaring like he’s ready to take on the world._  
  
 _“No.” No, Charles won’t come home? That’s foolish, when he clearly wants to: no one who was opposed would throw himself quite so fervently forward—ah, and there’s the hesitance: Charles draws up short, hand hovering in the air, halfway on toward grabbing a hold._  
  
 _Charles never can bring himself to close that final distance._  
  
 _Someday, maybe, but, for now, there’s a certain pleasure in pushing him back up against the pole. He goes limp, leaning into the metal, and emitting a delightful little squeak at the first promise of pressure down on his cock. All it takes is cupping him there, just lightly, and hoisting him back up with the other hand under his ass.]_  
  
Damn it all—that isn’t playing fair.  
  
He swallows down a breath, trying not to choke, while he keeps his eye solidly on Erik. “As I said, Erik: if you lie often enough, you begin to think it’s the truth. Case in point: you tell me so often that you respect me that I suspect you’ve convinced yourself that you _do_ , but _I_ find your assurances difficult to believe when you won’t do me the courtesy of concentrating on the matter at hand.”  
  
Frost laughs, tapping her nails against the table. Surprisingly, her support is actually welcome. She understands this—what Erik is doing—better than anyone, perhaps. “Don’t try to outplay a telepath at his own game, Sugar. _You_ might think that you believe something, but he’ll always be able to see the truth of it in your mind.”  
  
Erik expression hardens. “I _wasn’t.”_ And then, because he can never leave well enough alone, he tosses out an icy, “You say you want to be regent: what do you expect, Charles? For me to announce that I’ve decided to allow my bearer to waltz off with my children to rule the regions of the North? No one will believe that.”  
  
All right. Bringing up shortcomings is at least an indication of consideration. Ororo too appears slightly bolstered: her hand has stilled on the table, resting over the top of the folder too tensely for the position to be natural. “You wouldn’t be allowing a split. It would actually be a very politically savvy solution: keep the regions technically united, but designate an area where laws will allow better conditions for humans and bearers. Those individuals who see things the way I do will flee your regions and come to mine; those mutants in my regions that disagree will migrate down to your sphere of control.” Well, mostly. “Granted, I know people are often hesitant to leave their homes and relocate, but it would be a good start. You and I could present a united front while still maintaining our personal beliefs.”  
  
That, and maintain a good deal of frustration: Erik’s hands are clenched so tightly that the blood has drained out of the skin over his knuckles, leaving the areas chalky white. “You _should_ be ruling at my _side_ : _not_ at my borders.”  
  
Ruling? More like: come home, raise the children, lounge around in bed, and have no meaningful opinion on anything that might be problematic to Erik.  
  
No, thank you.  
  
There’s a certain amount of vicious pleasure in staring Erik down and very deliberately shaking his head. “That offer is off the table. All that’s left to decide is: would you rather I walk away and leave you to rot in a cell while the rest of the world—myself and our child included—goes to Hell, or would you prefer to come to an arrangement in which I would spend a portion of my time in your company?”  
  
If not for the suppression collar, all metal in the room would likely be leaking down to pool on the floor—or perhaps skewering them all. The look Erik is wearing—it’s the expression he usually contracts right before he calls a weapon up to his command. “You are my _bearer_ ,” he spits out, voice scraping the bottom of his octave range. It sounds as though he’s swallowed gravel. “You—“  
  
And as long as they can’t move past that—Erik’s obsession with biology—this negotiation will never progress. There’s a chance that’s how this will end. And, yes, it will mean potentially sending the world off into a nosedive. But… if they could negotiate with Logan, perhaps assist him in installing himself as Erik’s successor, a complete implosion might be avoided. There are always options, should Erik refuse to cooperate.  
  
That’s not to say that they won’t first exhaust every option available to make Erik cooperate.  
  
Waving a hand in Bobby’s direction, he pushes the chair back and climbs to his feet. “If you would, Bobby, escort my husband back down to his cell? I don’t believe we’ll make much more progress here today.”  
  
Both Ororo and Frost were prepped for this. Nearly simultaneously, they both stand from the table as well, glancing at each other with twin looks of disapproval—and Frost, no surprise, angles a particularly displeased look in Erik’s general direction. That doesn’t stop her from being a picture of grace when she saunters away from the table, though.  
  
Of everyone present in the room, Erik may well be the one who handles the news with the least poise: his face whitens, and he jerks a look over his shoulder, first at Bobby, then toward the door, and while he keeps his composure well enough to pull his body into check and stand before Bobby can yank him up, the prospect of being tossed back in a cell—and, conveniently, no timeframe for his further incarceration has been specified—has shaken him.  
  
Exactly as it was meant to do.  
  
“Fine,” he snaps, just as Bobby lays a hand on his elbow and prepares to draw him away toward the door. “For godsake, Charles, I’m listening. Sit back down.”  
  
Saying so is easy, but Erik hasn’t done much to prove his own claims. “Are you?” he asks, forcing his voice in a paradigm of pleasantry. “If you can’t even convince me that you’re taking this seriously, I have no reason to believe you’ll hold to any bargain we make.”  
  
“I think you’ve done very well to ensure that I have no choice _but_ to listen.”  
  
“Yes.” Keep the tone mild, musing. “When you’ve suddenly lost the ability to walk away from a conversation, you’re rather forced to listen, aren’t you?”  
  
It’s a pleasure—a guilty pleasure—to watch Erik flush red, though it’s not nearly as satisfying as watching him sink back down into the chair. A quick nod sends Bobby back toward the door, a thin, knowing smile on his face as he takes up his post. Ororo and Frost aren’t so blatant about what they know: they move back to their seats more stiffly, and, in Frost’s case, with a scowl. That might not be artificial: she probably _would_ enjoy seeing Erik tossed back in his cell.  
  
“You’ll really put our children in harm’s way?” Erik asks once they’re all seated. “You would allow this world to deteriorate into anarchy, simply in an effort to avoid living the life allotted for you on account of what you are?”  
  
“If it were only I that was affected, Erik, I would make due. But what you’re trying to maintain—it’s an entire _system_ that oppresses people by the thousands.” And that’s a conservative estimate. “Bearers, humans—if I watch this world descend into chaos, there’s at least the possibility that what rises up out of the ashes will be something that will allow people like me to live as more than broodmares.”  
  
Erik visibly jerks. “You aren’t—“  
  
And he’s so earnest about it too: he honestly believes that’s not the case. Erik doesn’t understand. He’s never understood. That’s what makes him so dangerous: he’s entrenched in the belief that he’s right.  
  
Letting Erik articulate that, though—no. He’s had more than enough chance to do that already. “I’m serious about my demands.” And maybe, just possibly, Erik is beginning to realize that: his movements have slowed down, and his head is cocked, moved by a level of attention that was missing before. “You don’t have to agree with the principle of what I’m saying. All you need to recognize is that, militarily, I’ve won. And the victor calls the terms. That I’m allowing you concessions at all is the result of political necessity and personal weakness.”  
  
“Personal?” Erik asks, raising an eyebrow. “I wouldn’t have thought you’d have bothered.”  
  
Low blow. If declarations of love could be coaxed out in the midst of misery, Erik should have no reason to doubt the continuance of such affection now that the situation is more favorable. Trussed up like a pig and tossed on a dance floor a few minutes after the wedding, and he’d been able to tell Erik he loved him _then_ : doubting that now is only vanity and petulance.  
  
“Don’t be stupid.” Wry, and cutting. “Purposeful ignorance doesn’t suit you, Erik.” If that’s indulged, they’ll be here all day, and this will become nothing more than an airing of their dirty laundry. Which, with an audience? Not a good plan. “Ororo, if you would read a list of what I’m willing to allow?”  
  
She’s been anticipating it: the paper is already out and framed between her hands, with one of her fingers resting at the beginning of the first bullet point. In some ways, it’s cowardly to ask Ororo to read this, but Erik wouldn’t take it as seriously from him—and it’s… easier, hearing it from someone else’s mouth.  
  
“Two weeks spent in Genosha every other month. Any children, with the exception of David, will attend as well. The birth of more children is not out of the question, pending a successful demonstration of the workability of this treaty. While in Genosha, no attempt will be made to influence the political structure: those two weeks will be for the purposes of personal interactions. Though, if requested, appearances in public are acceptable as long as they do not explicitly support any political goals that are against the interests of the North.”  
  
The room seems hollow all of a sudden, dug out by Ororo’s voice. No one speaks in the immediate aftermath, and though the solid weight of Erik’s disapproval could, if it were to manifest physically, pull down the walls, he doesn’t give voice to his thoughts—not right away. Instead, it’s Frost who breaks the silence, and, surprisingly, she doesn’t sound overly venomous. “It’s the best deal you’re going to get,” she tells Erik evenly, and with something that could almost be… understanding? “You should take it.” But Erik snorts, and—damn it, Frost is every bit justified in reverting to the cutting personality she usually favors. If Erik won’t take _her_ seriously either, there’s no reason she should lash out at him. “It’s more than I would have given _Shaw_ ,” she spits out at him.  
  
Erik freezes. Breathing, blinking—everything. “I’m not Shaw.”  
  
Gods, and she’s going to open her mouth and disagree, what the hell is she thinking, what—  
  
“No.” Thank the gods for Ororo. Brilliant, kind, level-headed Ororo. “You aren’t. But that doesn’t mean you aren’t making decisions that do evoke a certain comparison with him.”  
  
Three hundred years with that man. To be this kind after all that time, to be as even-keeled as she is—she _can’t_ be. Not fully. Anyone in that position has to have felt an almost incomparable bitterness, and it may be that Ororo has simply come out the other side of that and realized how badly damaging that emotion can be. But, whether or not that’s the case, she can’t be unaffected. Self-control is all well and good, but there’s a spark of grief in her eyes when she looks across the table at Erik. On the surface, she may be composed, but Ororo’s emotions run deeper than that. Somewhere, she’s also the woman who tried to kill Erik that day at the train station. Calm on the surface, but roiling underneath.  
  
Erik could learn a lot from her, if he bothered. They have more in common than either would probably like to admit—the difference being, Erik wears his anger on his sleeve, whereas Ororo has locked it away and turned it into purpose.  
  
But this isn’t Ororo’s fight. Erik is not her albatross, and she shouldn’t be expected to carry him in addition to her other burdens.  
  
“Erik.” Erik has always been remarkably quick to pull his attention back around—but it’s getting him to _listen_ that is the trick.  
  
Though, at the moment, it may be a matter of not listening _to_ Erik.  
  
With all the intensity racing through Erik’s mind, it’s little wonder that any memories floating on the surface of his thoughts are—they’re—no, not helpful, not—  
  
 _[Charles is hot and tight inside, maddening when he clenches like_ that _—fluttering muscles and snug heat, and he doesn’t know he’s doing it. He’s too lost in his own sensation, but he’s beautiful like this, pushing into every thrust and reaching out his hands to grab, tangling and tugging and pulling hair in time with the movements that rock into him._  
  
 _With the pole at his back, every motion pushes him a little higher: to tiptoes, and then off the ground altogether. At first he stretches his feet back down, fighting to regain the ground, but he leaves off soon enough, huffing and then coughing in the wake of it when one good push strangles the huff into a groan. Beautiful, to see him do this. Even the way Charles draws his legs up, and—there’s nothing quite like this: Charles’ legs clamped around his waist, all weight resting on him as he drives Charles up into the pole again and again._  
  
 _It’s Charles, though—Charles who is demanding with his lips and his teeth, tugging when he doesn’t get a hit in quite the spot he wants. This moment is_ Charles’ _, but playing along has never been sweeter._  
  
 _Charles, Charles, Charles._  
  
 _“_ Fuck _,” he slurs into the air between them, nosing in at Charles’ neck and licking a bead of sweat. Higher, too, into the pocket of fleshy softness under Charles’ jaw where there’s no protective bone._  
  
 _And Charles—he groans, tugging harder at Erik’s hair and dropping his head down, catching at Erik’s temple with his lips and dusting a kiss there._  
  
 _“Just agree,” Charles gasps out. “Pl-please. Give—give me what I want.”_  
  
 _What he wants? How about what_ both _of them want: the movement of their bodies together, uncomplicated—why is Charles complicating it?—and in sync. Charles’ shoulder blades form wings under his hands, but he’ll be damned if Charles flies away. It isn’t right. They’re meant to be together. They’re bonded. “You’ll come home,” he chokes out against Charles’ collarbone.]_  
  
Home. Erik had been so certain, and he’d clung to that certainty far past the afterglow. They’d ended up on the ground together, curled against the pole, with him seated in Erik’s lap until the tent had begun to grow darker and there hadn’t been any more time.  
  
Erik had been escorted out of the camp before the sun had gone down.  
  
Three months later, the results of that day had finally been undeniably clear.  
  
And, now, two more months after that, here they are: five months pregnant, negotiating for peace. Here, where it’s a matter of dragging up a block to the memories and pushing them back down beneath the surface.  
  
“Erik,” he says again, slower this time, watching as Erik drops his chin down and angles his eyes up, predatory and waiting and… desperate. Those things shouldn’t mingle so easily, but Erik wears them like a second skin. “If you refuse, you lose your kingdom, your freedom, _and_ me. What reason could you possibly have at this point to withhold your cooperation?”  
  
His mouth snaps open too quickly to indicate a good response—but Erik stalls himself, closing his lips and swallowing, gathering himself back up before trying again. “If I agreed, what makes you think I’d keep my word?”  
  
A fair question. “Because I’ve set you up to fail if you don’t.”  
  
The force of Erik’s irritation ricochets down the bond—or possibly through the air. Both Ororo and Frost react too: Frost by raising an eyebrow, and Ororo when she tips up her jaw and studies Erik with a more openly concentrated scrutiny than previously.  
  
It’s several moments before Erik shatters the silence with a cold, “What?”  
  
Cold, as though Erik has any right at all to be angry. This isn’t a betrayal: this is necessity, and Erik is the one who created the need for leverage. “If you appoint me as regent, you’re backing me politically. It will require explanation to the public, and before I set foot in Genosha, I expect that you’ll be particularly convincing. You’ll make them _believe_ you trust me to rule.”  
  
“Charles, honestly—“  
  
Erik has cut him across more than enough for this lifetime. No longer. Not here. Erik knows it too: a quick glare is enough to quell him back into silence. “You go back on that and trap me in Genosha when I come, there will be no possibility of portraying that positively: my armies will be across your border and at your throat before you can do a thing to stop them. I’ll have a regent already lined up to ensure that you don’t have the luxury of a gap in time before the armies descend. Additionally, I’ll bring an armed guard with me whenever I’m in Genosha. And… if I feel it’s necessary, another telepath too.”  
  
Bringing Jean into a situation like this rings as unfair, but the fact remains: she’s the best suited. She’s already David’s nanny, and by carrying that over to any other children too, she’ll have a perfect reason to come along—a _passive_ reason. Erik will watch the soldiers with a terrifying level of scrutiny, but he’ll be less likely to be concerned with the children’s nanny, beyond questioning whether she’s competent to care for the children—and Jean can pass that test easily. To Erik, she’ll be nothing more than the baseline human—easily explained as an attempt to foster in the children a favorable view of humans—who looks after David and his siblings. Easy enough, then, to tell Erik that the guard is the telepath when, in reality, it’s Jean.  
  
“You can’t expect that I’ll allow another telepath into my base of operations,” Erik says slowly, tapping a finger against the table in clear irritation. “Not without assurances that there won’t be a leak of state secrets.”  
  
“Why would there be? Have I ever given you the impression that _I_ want to rule all the regions? I recognize that removing you from power will negate my own claim, and, thus, my children’s ability to inherit. I have no reason to command another telepath to steal your secrets or plot your downfall. Besides, another telepath is simply a necessity. Your interference means that _I_ cannot be guaranteed to sense anything in the minds of your men. All you would have to do is lay your plans in the weeks prior to my arrival and then shut down my telepathy once I was within the palace. You’ll have a much more difficult time doing that with another telepath—and this telepath will scan the minds of your men upon arrival.”  
  
“Your list of demands is growing longer by the minute, Charles.” And Erik’s level of annoyance is increasing in proportion to that length—as is his focus. He no longer has a care for either Ororo or Frost.  
  
No matter what the circumstances, it’s a heady sensation, being the sole focus of Erik’s attention.  
  
Like holding the starring role in the production of a lifetime—and the power that goes with it, with having Erik heed his words for the first time in so long. It bolsters a thin brand of humor more along the lines of wryness: it curves into his lips and tugs them into a sick approximation of a smile. Harsh and firm and the furthest thing from what he wants to be, but it’s what Erik requires from someone to whom he will listen. “Appoint me and then go back on it,” he continues, watching Erik’s nose twitch at the onset of a particularly sharp breath, “and _you_ will look the weak, double-minded fool who’s controlled by his biology. Losing a war frees you of that stigma: appointing me is merely the result of the treaty—but breaking that treaty and knowingly destabilizing the regions and starting another war all so that you can have me tucked away safe and at your beck and call—that, Erik, would make you appear a very unfit ruler indeed. The first time, you could justify it by telling everyone that you were uniting the regions. The second time, you could also justify it by depicting my actions as a dangerous rebellion. But, this time—if you try to force me back to your side again—the regions will already be technically united, and you’ll have appointed me regent over Westchester. _This time_ , if you try to undermine my rule, you’ll just look weak.”  
  
If not for the sweat on Erik’s palms, it would be impossible to tell precisely how affected he is by those demands. But when Erik draws his fists back in closer to his body, regardless of the cuffs at his wrists, he leaves a streak on the table, and, if that weren’t evidence enough, the turmoil drifting about in the bond is proof enough.  
  
“You could probably do it, you know,” Frost cuts in, idly dipping her chin with a distinct flavor of disdain. “All these stipulations he’s laying out—you could circumvent them and force him back to your side, kill the rest of us, maybe even raze Westchester.” She sniffs disdainfully. “But you can’t get around his last point: do any of that, and you destroy your legitimacy. You destroy your _children’s_ legitimacy. And when revolt comes knocking—and you know it will—you’ll also endanger _him_.” She jerks her head in Charles’ direction. “Do you know what happens to bearers whose guardians are taken prisoner, Lehnsherr?”  
  
Erik does. It’s written in his face. Or, rather, in the spoiled milk complexion of his skin. Not in his expression, which was made to play poker, but in the parts of himself that he can’t hide.  
  
Frost doesn’t wait for an answer. “Best case scenario, they keep you alive. They’ll block his telepathy and the bond, but at least he won’t suffer the ordeal of being bonded to another guardian. Doesn’t change the basic facts, though, does it? Usurpers are especially prone to fucking their opponent’s bearer. It would be the smartest thing to do: legitimize a new rule by impregnating the old monarch’s bearer—or were you hoping to pretend that he couldn’t get pregnant outside the bond?”  
  
Erik isn’t pretending anything: he has no energy to spare on that, when it appears that he’s plotting how to eviscerate Frost slowly and with the utmost infliction of agony.  
  
She sighs and raises both eyebrows. “They might even make you watch. Would you like that? Watching, helpless, as someone else fucked him in front of you?”  
  
“Emma,” Ororo murmurs. Her hand advances into the space between them, but she doesn’t grab Frost or physically attempt to silence her—not yet.  
  
If she’s hoping to prevent bloodshed, she might need to physically intervene soon: Erik’s face has flushed a violent red, and his eyes have darkened, deepening to a blacked-out green that reflects poison rather than the sea, as the green of his eyes usually tends to do.  
  
But Emma isn’t finished. “More likely, they’ll just kill you and break the bond. Whoever takes over will fuck him, and spark a new bond with him. The kind of control _you_ have over him? Someone else will have that. You might praise the bond as a natural relationship between a bearer and a guardian, but I’ll bet you don’t want anyone _else_ having that kind of power over him.”  
  
“What I _want,_ Frost _,”_ Erik hisses, seething, “is for you and I to have this conversation when I’m _not_ restrained.”  
  
For all the effect that has, he might not have bothered: she huffs, rolling her eyes. “I’ll bet. Until then, you ought to consider whether you’re willing to potentially put your husband in the situation I’m describing. Because if you break your end of the deal? Then, Sugar, you’re setting the scene for that kind of horror.”  
  
Erik’s lips twist in a snarl. “You—“  
  
“She’s right.”  
  
Those two words echo: they bounce off the walls and punch back, pummeling Charles with his own words. Admitting the truth of what Frost has said doesn’t make it any more or less true—but it does mean _accepting_ that it’s true.  
  
If that’s what it takes to make Erik understand, then so be it.  
  
“She’s right, Erik.”  
  
This time, when Erik turns back to him, his face softens, fading out the harshness over his cheekbones and mellowing the color in his eyes. His lips remain thin and stressed, but he’s controlled, and gentler. “I wouldn’t—you know I would never want that for you, Charles. You can’t possibly believe—“  
  
“I _don’t_ believe you want that. But you go back on this deal, and it won’t matter what you _want_ : you may well end up putting me in that position regardless.”  
  
“I haven’t made any deal yet.” His tongue slides over his lower lip, moistening it. It does look rather chapped: he must have been biting it in the last few days, or perhaps the air in the cells is dry. Either way, tiny red cracks have begun to appear, brightened by the white of dried skin.  
  
“If you don’t, then you’re gambling: if power falls into the wrong hands—if we can’t pull someone out of your army who is trustworthy and capable of leading—then what Frost is describing is very likely to happen anyway.”  
  
Watching Erik’s face pinch and twist in undiluted earnestness is physically painful. “This could all be solved if you come home. End this insanity, Charles. Come home where you belong.”  
  
If Erik only could have understood, this wouldn’t have been necessary. But Erik _doesn’t_ understand. He may _never_ understand. Then again, maybe someday he _will_ —but it isn’t a guarantee. And, so, here they are, with Erik backed into a corner, manipulated and forced into making concessions. It’s the same old game: forcing someone into something doesn’t make him believe it, no matter how desperately you would like him to do so.  
  
“I will not help you build a world where people like myself are second-class citizens, and where humans are fit only to be trampled beneath your boot. I’d rather die. And I very possibly _will_ die—or worse—if you refuse to meet me halfway on this. I suppose, then, that it comes down to that: I’m wagering my life and my wellbeing on the supposition that you would rather allow me a measure of autonomy than see me destroyed. Was I wrong?”  
  
Another pass of tongue over his lips, accompanied by a jerky shake of his head. “No.” Another sharper shake. “Of course not. No. You’re not—of course you’re not wrong. I would do anything to keep you safe. But, Charles, if you would just come home—”  
  
“I won’t. So make your decision.”  
  
Once the decision is made, there will be no going back. Erik can attempt to cajole him into giving up control of Westchester, but, even if he were to give it up voluntarily, the precedent would already be set: Westchester and the North will be governed by different principles.  
  
Once given, Erik can’t take this away with destroying everything, himself included.  
  
“Erik?”  
  
But Erik drops his eyes and sucks in a deep pull of air, raising his shoulders with the motion. He holds it, refusing to exhale until there’s a pink tinge to his cheeks, and his muscles have tightened up into contractions. When he does finally let loose his breath, it’s almost painful: seeing defeat in Erik’s posture is the antithesis of normal and safe and—Erik is never defeated, simply because he never declares the fight over until he wins. Watching him concede now hooks down deep into Charles’ gut and squeezes tight around the organs, clenching in against them and freezing them in what feels like concrete.  
  
“Erik?”  
  
No response. Erik—gods, it hurts, hurting Erik like this. This kind of manipulating and hurt—it’s for the best, but when, from Erik’s point of view, it _isn’t_ , there’s no comfort in that. There’s no comfort from anything at all.  
  
Erik deserves to suffer for what he’s done. Right?  
  
Perhaps. But Erik did what he did because he believed it was right—not out of cruelty. To take pleasure in Erik’s suffering now would be potentially worse: it would be done for no reason other than revenge, and, in that case, there’s no well-meant motive to hide behind.  
  
More than that, this is _Erik_.  
  
He loves Erik. Of course he does.  
  
Hating him a little too doesn’t preclude that.  
  
The wrong Erik has done is not enough to stop Charles from pushing his chair back, ignoring the startled glances of Ororo and Frost, and while it does give pause to his steps as he rounds the table, slowing his footfalls to a rhythmic staccato on the floor, only a handful of seconds elapse before he’s poised next to Erik, one hand falling down to brush his shoulder.  
  
Erik tips his head to the side, staring upward.  
  
There isn’t much space between Erik and the table, but it’s sufficient to wiggle into, pushing the chair—and Erik—out a few inches further until there’s room to sink down onto Erik’s lap. And Erik, startled though he obviously is—wide-eyed and open-mouthed—has the presence of mind to lean back and move his bound hands out of the way.  
  
“Erik.” Said again, and quieter this time, a secret only for the two of them, and hemmed in by raising his hands to Erik’s face and laying his fingers along the ridges of Erik’s cheekbones, his palms flat over the flesh of Erik’s cheeks. “I love you. You know I do. But I can’t live like we were before. And, even if I could, I couldn’t live with _myself_ , knowing I’d left others to burn for the sake of my own weakness. Already, I have your conquering on my conscience: you tore apart the world to get me back. People have _died_ , Erik, because of us. It needs to stop. Please. Make it stop. Because if you don’t, I will. And I’ll do it no matter the cost to myself.”  
  
Swallowing, Erik tips his head back and pushes his cheek up into the touch. “Do you understand what you’re asking of me?”  
  
 “Yes.” A nod. “I’m asking you to make the decision that’s best for me—the best decision you _can_ make, given the options I’ve left you. Blame me if you need to: it will be no less than I already blame _you_.”  
  
Curling his neck to side, Erik presses a kiss to the nearest palm. There’s a hint of a smile in his lips. “Do you really hate me so much, _Liebling_?”  
  
Not enough to easily work through the vice grip those words enact on his lungs. Please, then, let the answer be the fault of that lack of air: “ _No_.”  
  
The smile dissolves into a strangled chuckle. “Then have your deal, Charles, so long as I can at least have part of you.”  
  
 _Oh._ But… “You already have the core of me, Erik.” Ororo and Frost, Bobby and Sean—they’re watching, but, silent as they are, pretending they aren’t there is at least possible. Only Erik. Only Erik, who sighs throatily when Charles lays his head down onto Erik’s shoulder, dropping his hands until one rests directly over Erik’s heart. “And now you have to live with it. Both the best _and_ the worst of me.”  
  
Erik breathes out a weak laugh—but it’s the kiss that he presses down into Charles’ hair that leaves the lasting imprint. “Yes, your damnable ability to forgive. It’s a vulnerability. But… it also makes you mine.” Another laugh. “The best and the worst, yes.” He pauses, considering, but when he starts again, his voice is stronger, bitter, but with real affection. “Have your region, then, Darling. I can’t stop you.”  
  
And _that_ is worth smiling about. “No, you can’t.” After all this time… finally. _Finally_.  
  
Erik can’t stop him, and that makes this _real_.  
  
 It makes _everything_ real, _them_ included.  
  
 _Finally._


	38. Epilogue (Part One)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay! I'm having trouble getting the ending to do what I want it to do. Plus, I ended up encountering some turbulence in my personal life this past week, so that derailed things. Anyhow, I've decided to split the epilogue into two parts, as it just seems to make more sense given the length.

[Epilogue, Part One]

“Papa!”  
  
Finally letting Pietro off the train is, at this point, the best kind of relief. Whatever treat David got after breakfast—compensation, as always, for being left behind when his siblings and his bearer go south—Pietro must have nicked some of it. Was Jean serving pure sugar for breakfast? It would explain Pietro’s exuberance if that were the case.  
  
Sighing, he steadies Pietro as he shoots forward. This… enthusiasm more than likely can be explained away by his personality: he’s turning out to be the more outgoing of the twins, and, recently, each time they’ve gone to see Erik, he’s taken that as a license to unleash havoc on the palace. Serves Erik right: he’s too indulgent with Pietro most of the time, and while it’s understandable that he doesn’t want to spend the time he has with his children on discipline, Pietro will end up being a right terror as a teenager if this keeps up.  
  
Plus, it’s a horror to even imagine what he’ll do when he finally figures out that the rest of Genosha isn’t going to allow him to flounce about as he pleases once he gets older. Being the heir to the crown doesn’t mean eternal playtime and getting to perpetually sit on Papa’s throne: it means _responsibility._  
  
“Hello, little love.” Erik greets his son with a grin, sweeping him up in his arms when Pietro comes barreling off the train toward him, smacking into his chest with a solid _thump_. The collision is forceful enough that Erik stagers a few steps, backpedaling before regaining his footing.  
  
Wanda, however, doesn’t move.  
  
It’s funny, how Erik has bonded better with Pietro, when Wanda is actually far more like Erik. That isn’t to say that it doesn’t make sense: Wanda, while she loves her father, has always been a touch wary of him—and it’s sad, but she isn’t without reason, given what she overheard of her parents’ arguments before Erik realized that she was old enough to begin understanding. It doesn’t help, either, that she doesn’t see Erik for weeks at a time: he’s always verging on being an unknown quality.  
  
“Don’t you want to say hello to your Papa, Darling?” he prompts Wanda, jostling her lightly where she’s leaning against his hip, head resting against his side. Still sleepy from a nap, it looks like: her large green eyes—Erik’s eyes—are a bit watery, and her reddish curls are a mess.  
  
Sometimes, she looks so much like Erik that it hurts.  
  
And, at two and half years old, her personality is plenty developed—well enough to notice that the similarities with her father don’t end merely at the aesthetics. Like Erik, she’s not quick with her affection toward any but those she holds closest. She’s generally a guarded child, disinclined toward frivolous socialization, but focused when she gets a goal in her head. Considering that, it’s slightly dangerous that she also seems to have developed her bearer’s capacity for strategy: she knows what she wants, and she’s dreadfully clever about getting it. Single-minded like Erik, but creative. The world isn’t ready.  
  
It might be a bit of a blessing that she’ll never rule a region.  
  
When Wanda doesn’t make any attempt to detach herself and make a move for Erik, Erik removes the necessity and slings Pietro over onto his hip, eating up the distance between himself and the rest of his family with an eagerness that’s easily reflected in his smile. “Hello, Sweetheart,” he greets, bending down to press a kiss to Wanda’s forehead.  
  
She bears it well enough, watching Erik with rounded eyes and silently curling her fingers more tightly into Charles’ trousers.  
  
If Erik is disappointed by the lack of enthusiasm—and he probably is—he hides it well. There’s enough else to content him for the time being.  
  
Specifically: “And hello to you too, Little One,” he says with a grin, laying a hand down over the now especially prominent bump of Charles’ stomach.  
  
Eight months gone, and this far along everything is becoming increasingly uncomfortable. Some bearers like pregnancy. Good for them. Embracing insanity is probably the better bet. Because this? It’s only enjoyable for the insane. Morning sickness and feeling like a beached whale, and the horrid cravings, backaches—  
  
Speaking of which: Erik plucks Wanda up off the ground, frowning when she squirms and reaches for Charles, inadvertently giving away how often he’s still been in the habit of holding her. “You’re too far along to be carrying her, _Liebling_ ,” Erik says reproachfully. “You know that.”  
  
Yes, but she wasn’t getting off the train any other way. Pietro might have been especially eager to head for his father, but Wanda would have just assumed continue her nap, content to stay with Jean as she oversees the escort that always accompanies them to Genosha. As it is, Wanda shifts discontentedly, twisting in Erik’s arms and refusing to relax her limbs, even once she goes still against her father’s chest.  
  
This time, Erik can’t entirely prevent the slip of a sigh that his daughter’s actions elicit.  
  
 _[How has she been?]_ he pushes through the bond, brushing a kiss to the top of her head.  
  
 _[She’s grumpy from her nap. Don’t take it personally.]_  
  
 _[We both know it isn’t the nap, Charles.]_  
  
True. But it doesn’t seem quite fair not to at least give Erik the opportunity to allow it to be something other than the fact that his daughter simply isn’t comfortable with him. Wanda, though—she’s too smart for her own good, and she _sees_ things. Things like Charles hissing out refusals at Erik, snarling arguments with the word “bearer” repeated over and over—and Wanda had somehow put it together that she is the very thing about which they were speaking.  
  
A bearer.  
  
“Papa! Papa, can we play in the gardens?!”  
  
Pietro, on the other hand, far from resenting his father, only sees an opportunity for the kind of free rein that he only ever enjoys in Genosha.  
  
“In a bit, _Spatzi_ ,” Erik tells him absently, leaning in and—  
  
Ah. Well. Weeks away always do make Erik’s touch rather welcome: he inclines toward Erik and returns the kiss, nuzzling his way up Erik’s jaw line and inhaling deeply, sinking down into the comfort of that scent. There’s nothing quite like watching Erik smile and move the moment along by tipping his chin down and busing a kiss to the nearest bit of skin he can reach. A cheek, as it turns out. If Erik’s arms weren’t full with a child, there’d be more room to move in further toward Erik, toward the hands that settle on his abdomen, lightly pressing and keeping balance. Tonight, then, when the children aren’t here.  
  
“You feel uncomfortable,” Erik observes, though he steps back and sets Wanda down, taking both her and her brother by their hands instead. Pietro impatiently tries to dart ahead, leaning his full weight against the grip and swinging, tiny feet braced against the ground. Wando, however, waits quietly, watching Erik with expressionless eyes.  
  
Both twins have tested positive for mutation, but it remains to be seen what, precisely, they’ll manifest as. With Pietro, it’s easy to imagine a frenetic ability, something that allows him to break the confines of time that he always seems to be railing against. Wanda is different. Whatever she becomes, she’ll be quieter in her ability than Pietro, more apt to enact her influence undetected. In that, she’s not much like Erik at all.  
  
“I’m eight months pregnant: at this point comfort no longer exists.”  
  
It never did, when it came to pregnancy. Just because this has happened once before does not erase nearly thirty years of seeing himself as a guardian _._ There will never be a circumstance where his distended stomach feels normal. Pregnancy is terribly like looking in the mirror and not recognizing the person staring back. This body is _other_. It doesn’t feel like _him_.  
  
As might be expected, Erik has not one ounce of comprehension of that struggle.  
  
Granted, that doesn’t mean he doesn’t try to soothe all aches and pains. And again, as always, that manifests as soon as they settle, this time in the garden where the twins can totter around after the large but remarkably good-natured dog that Erik acquired nearly a year ago now. Both twins grin widely as they chase the poor beast, which takes their attention in its stride, rolling over onto its back and allowing them to tumble over it in a good-natured heap of body parts and flailing limbs.  
  
Erik, meanwhile—he’s making himself useful, taking the opportunity to rub gently at the muscles of his Charles’ back. Gods bless him for that. Those clever hands are worth their weight in gold, and the massage, combined with Erik’s scent—close like this, when he’s seated between Erik’s legs on the grass, back to chest—lulls him. Erik’s hands between the space of their bodies, working out the aches—this is a level of paradise that pregnancy makes more of a necessity than an option.  
  
The scent especially is becoming increasingly vital. Pregnant bearers crave their guardians. That’s simple fact. Erik’s scent is biologically meant to be soothing, enough that a few minutes of breathing it in at close proximity is sufficient to create a haze of pleasant drifting calm.  
  
Being away from this is hell.  
  
Hell, but necessary.  
  
“They get bigger so quickly,” Erik comments, watching the twins. Both have scrambled back to their feet, and Wanda has latched onto the dog’s side and is using it as an impromptu walker to aid her as she stumbles about. Pietro speeds along behind, screeching for her to wait for him. “And David—“  
  
 _That_ is a subject that Erik always tries to broach, and at which he never succeeds particularly well. “David is none of your concern.” Hazy or not, enjoying Erik’s scent or not, that is not a topic that is fit for discussion in present company. David is not Erik’s child, not his heir, and not his concern, and it’s prudent if the twins never think otherwise.  
  
“Charles, I care—“  
  
“He’s not your son.”  
  
“I want him to be.”  
  
What’s worse is that Erik is telling the truth. His actions have borne that out: he truly, unreservedly wants David as his own child and perhaps regards him as such within his own mind. For that short time when he was allowed access, he cemented that hope, and it’s never died.  
  
“Be well content with your own children,” he bites back at Erik, shifting his hips uncomfortably. There’s just no getting properly situated. With all this extra weight, and the baby dancing on his bladder….  
  
But Erik cannot leave well enough alone: “You know very well that I love our children. I’d do anything for more time with them. If you’d agree—“  
  
“I’m not having this conversation with you with the twins in earshot. Or do you _want_ your daughter to _again_ overhear us arguing about the rights of bearers?”  
  
Erik stills, tensing. It takes a moment, but he eventually quivers. Were that it could be attributed to fear—but that would be patently false. It’s merely overwrought irritation, and while Erik has gotten better at hiding it for the sake of the children, it bursts out in gestures such as these. “You _know_ I love her. If it were up to me, I’d see her trained in statecraft: she’d learn to have power to command her circumstances and help her eventual mate rule—“  
  
“So thank the gods she’s under _my_ jurisdiction,” he interrupts dryly. Enough of this: tugging forward, he bats away Erik’s hands and tips to the side, rolling up and onto his knees. Getting to his feet has grown progressively more difficult in recent months. Predictably, though, Erik jumps to help him, steadying him with hands on his hips and tugging him upward with accommodating concern.  
  
It’s always galling, finding out just how necessary that help is in these late months of pregnancy.  
  
Even once they’re both on their feet, Erik doesn’t let go. “Speaking along those lines,” he begins again, following along with a hand on the small of Charles’ back when Charles begins moving off toward their children, “I’d like your advice.”  
  
“Oh?” It’s not uncommon for Erik to request that, actually. Gods know his question won’t pertain to laws regarding bearers, but there’s a good chance it might touch on matters of taxes, organization, public relations, ways to maintain the interactions between the North and the South—anything along those lines that might be currently troubling Erik.  
  
“I’ve received intelligence reporting that the House of Essex has paid out large sums of money to several members of my military. They aren’t key officers, but they’re high enough up to cause trouble, and the fact that they’re accepting funds from a family that’s known to make trouble… I’m sure you understand why it’s disconcerting.”  
  
Absolutely. If Erik’s reign is destabilized by the nobles of the South who grew fat off Shaw’s favor, then that will put the North in an equally precarious position. Erik may be infuriating, but treating with Essex would be Hell. “You can track the transactions?” he asks, allowing Erik to slide his arm fully around his back and take him by his opposite hip, tugging their sides into alignment. Neither Pietro nor Wanda take any notice of what their parents are doing, but the baby isn’t so accommodating: it gives him a solid kick right in the kidney.  
  
The joys of pregnancy.  
  
“Yes. We have proof. The question is what to do with it.”  
  
“Indeed. If you show your hand and reveal that you have access to their financial dealings, you can’t expect the rest of them to expose themselves via the same avenue.”  
  
“Exactly my concern. But neither can I allow them to continue bribing military officials.”  
  
“Very true—“ Oh, for goodness sake: “Pietro, don’t push your sister!” They may as well write off her dress at this point, but the sheer number of twigs that last tumble forced into her hair equates to a very unpleasant session of hair brushing tonight.  
  
Erik catches him at the wrist when he tries to start forward. The hand not gripping his wrist darts to his stomach, smoothing over it. “I’ll get it.”  
  
It’s this sort of cosseting that actually _is_ a help: his back is aching, and the prospect of tugging his children out of a thicket doesn’t exactly inspire enthusiasm. The children come at Erik’s call easy enough anyhow, each relinquishing a tiny hand to his grasp as he leads them back away from the bushes. The dog lopes along behind them.  
  
“I dare say it’s time for dinner anyway,” Erik points out once he’s back at Charles’ side, smiling gently and watching both children babble back and forth at each other. Now if only Wanda could be convinced to actually babble at _Erik_ —getting her to do so in his presence at all is progress—things would be very nearly comfortable.  
  
“Time enough to change, I hope. They have half the garden in their hair. I’ll just call Jean.”  
  
A quick mental nudge sets Jean moving in their direction. Apparently she’d not been listening in on anything especially influential at the moment—not that Erik would know anything about that, when, as far as he’s concerned, Jean is human.  
  
Of course, if Erik ever took a look at his memories of Jean, that perception would be dispelled with alarming alacrity. It’s a good job Erik has long since agreed that any memories or thoughts that are locked _stay_ locked, unless otherwise bargained for in moments of clearer judgment. The second Erik takes to rifling through his head as he’s done a few times before, departure will only be a matter of how quickly the train can be readied to leave for Westchester.  
  
That’s assuming that Jean can’t first be reached by a mental call for help. If she heard his distress, returning to Westchester right away might end up being unthinkable: he’d need to be present to stop Jean from doing Erik permanent damage.  
  
Oblivious to the undercurrents of his domestic situation—Jean is, as far as the children are concerned, simply a nanny—Pietro yanks at Erik’s hand. “I don’t want to go to dinner!”  
  
Well, no, because that would mean sitting still, and gods forbid that Pietro would do that.  
  
“Perhaps not,” he answers his son before Erik is pinned in the uncomfortable position of trying answer. Speaking of uncomfortable: it’s an effort not to give into the desire to shift uncomfortably from foot to foot. Everything aches these days, but, knowing Pietro, he’d recognize like for like and assume that all fidgeting meant the same thing: weakness, and the potential to get his way. “But I’ll warrant you’d like your father to let you play with the metal later, and _that_ is something only allowed to children who can manage to be good throughout dinner.”  
  
“Good” being a relative term. For Pietro, remaining in the chair through dinner is exemplary behavior.  
  
Pietro’s face twists, and he casts a glance first at Wanda and, apparently receiving the support he felt he needed, turning his gaze upon Erik. “Papa--!”  
  
“Your Daddy is right,” Erik tells him solemnly, despite the hint of a smile that’s hiding just behind his sternness.  
  
No one creates a pout quite like Pietro, and he doesn’t disappoint this time around either. Wanda handles the rejection better, setting her tiny jaw and watching Erik speculatively, as if waiting for more information. Even listening in on her thoughts doesn’t do much to explain what she’s feeling, when she doesn’t understand it herself: Erik is a source of confusion to her, and besides a general ebb and flow of unease in his presence, her perceptions of him are murky and overall removed. In her mind, he isn’t an integral part of her life: if Erik were gone tomorrow, she wouldn’t mourn. Truthfully, she doesn’t understand his purpose, or their connection, given that what she associates as a father compounds with “bearer” and not with the man who has always cast a shadow over her life.  
  
But… Erik does try. Wanda is simply too perceptive for her own good. Early on, there had been worry that she was a telepath—rather like David, actually—but it’s become increasingly clear that’s not the case. It’s simply a matter of her personality—of innate perceptiveness.  
  
Luckily, Jean arrives before Wanda can put that perceptiveness to use by zeroing in on any of Erik’s weak spots.  
  
Erik doesn’t notice Jean at first, as engrossed as he is in Pietro’s enthusiastic discourse. Though, a fair lot of it looks to be conveyed with the hope of securing Erik’s commitment to manipulate metal later on tonight, good behavior at dinner or not. It’s difficult to blame Pietro: it does appear to be quite a lot of fun, having Erik zip the twins around the room, held up by metal wrapped around their torsos. They’re also very taken with Erik’s ability to shift metal into various shapes upon command. Even Wanda is willing to crawl up onto his lap and make requests when he does it.  
  
 _[Anything of interest?]_ he pushes toward Jean, though outwardly he only gives her a polite nod and a warm greeting. Erik catches sight of her at the sound of the address, and, brushing Pietro off for the moment, greets her with a quick, “Miss Grey.”  
  
 _[Azazel is a bit worried about a potential uprising in the South. General Howlett is down there now, but he hasn’t been able to find out much.]_  
  
 _[Erik did mention. Send any information on to Frost, if you wouldn’t mind.]_  
  
As always. It’s damn useful, this link between Jean and Frost. It lets them maintain a working connection between Westchester and Genosha, despite the distance. With Ororo holding Westchester when he’s spending time down here with Erik, she’s thus in the position to act on any information Frost gives her.  
  
 _[Also, your sister is apparently in a mood today.]_  
  
Raven so often is these days. She hasn’t taken well to transitioning from being a high ranking official in Erik’s court to being the spouse of a high-ranking official. She’s still convinced that it was a fluke that resulted in her permanent status as a bearer: just her body responding to and accommodating Azazel, despite her default setting being that of a guardian. According to her, she’s artificially stuck as a bearer.  
  
So Erik says anyway. Having not spoken to Raven since her deportment to Genosha, Erik’s word is the only source of information readily available.  
  
“If you’d take the children to get ready for dinner, Jean, I’d be grateful.”  
  
Erik is always saying he doesn’t need to frame it as a request when she’s an employee, but that’s mere bluster: Erik only ever smiles now—a quirked, heavy smile—when the requests come, and there’s a syrupy comfort in the back of his mind that enjoys the familiar reminder of his husband’s quirks. Erik _likes_ his quirks.  
  
“Of course,” she answers politely, beckoning for the children. Wanda darts to her quickly. They get on fabulously, those two. Some days, when they’re in Westchester, Wanda will follow her all the way back to her own rooms and dog Jean’s step right up until she and Scott begin to prepare for bed. Scott doesn’t object—a quick look into his mind revealed that it gives him hope of a future day when that child will be his and Jean’s—and Jean actively enjoys it, so he’s never bothered to put a stop to it.  
  
Pietro, knowing that he’ll have far better luck wrangling concessions from his father, is slower to go, but Erik gives him a good nudge, and with a very put upon sigh Pietro slips over to Jean and latches a hold of her leg. “Miss Jean!” As though her name could have changed since he last saw her on the train. But Jean just smiles and sets about leading the twins away.  
  
 _[Also, if you would, Jean, ask Frost to make a quick scan of our own military officials_. _Nothing invasive—I only want to know if they’ve taken any bribes. Better safe than sorry.]_ There’s very little chance that the House of Essex is enterprising enough to try to make inroads into the North, but the possibility is always there.  
  
 _[Yes, M’Lord.]_  
  
 _[Thank you.]_  
  
In some ways it’s funny, but if Erik were to break his promise and have a look through his memories now, he’d likely be surprised at just how entwined their kingdoms’ interests are at this point. Despite having very different laws concerning one crucial aspect of society, quite a lot of Westchester’s security is tied up in ensuring that Erik keeps his throne.  
  
“I can feel your mind working,” Erik murmurs as he steps in closer, tugging Charles back up against him. A quick nuzzle presses Erik’s cheek to his hair, and for the space of a few moments at least, it’s acceptable to lean back into Erik and close his eyes, contenting himself with smelling the fresh air mingled with Erik’s own distinctive scent. “Anything in particular?”  
  
“You know it’s habit for me to read minds. It’s only surface thoughts.” True, actually: sending thoughts back and forth with Jean only skims the surface of the mind. That’s all Erik will feel: only him, using his telepathy at a surface level.  
  
Erik presses a kiss to his cheek. “And was the poor girl horrified by the state of our hellions?”  
  
“Oh, immensely.”  
  
“Hm. Me too.”  
  
Down at Erik’s side, the dog, now bereft of its playmates, nudges Erik’s hand with its nose. That’s enough to break up the moment, and Erik steps away, calling his dog to heel and glancing toward the doors. “Shall we?”  
  
“I suppose we’d better if we hope to get any of this mess fixed by dinner.”  
  
“Fixed?” Erik scoffs. “If we can untangle a tenth of it, I’ll be pleased.”  
  
Such a heartening prospect—and so it continues to be when, three hours later, they’re still seated at the table in Erik’s room, pouring over financial accounts. Dinner has been forgone, with Jean being notified to see to it that the children attend and are properly fed, and to apologize to both of them and make effusive promises that Erik will play their much beloved metal game with them in the morning.  
  
“This won’t stay untouched. Essex is part of a network. If they think they’ve gotten away with this, they’ll recommend it to other families in their circle.”  
  
Erik, who is seat next to him, nods and pushes another sheet of paper over toward him. “They’ve been quiet in the last year, but that doesn’t mean they’ve resigned themselves to my rule. Exactly how organized do you think they are?”  
  
Enough to be a problem. He runs his eyes down the new column of numbers. Same as the other column: it’s always subtle, with a small sum added across accounts, and often deposited by multiple names. It’s a wonder Erik’s people caught this at all: he truly must be watching these families closely. “Organized enough to be a nuisance, but not organized enough to be a military threat. Yet. For now, I’d say you’d do well to clean out your military and make certain your men are loyal.”  
  
“Would you be willing to scan them?”  
  
“Scan all of your officers? No. Give me an actual suspect and something specific to look for, then yes.” Scanning all of them—there’s no telling what he’d find. Erik’s men serve for vastly different reasons, and, unlike Westchester, where the people generally serve because they believe in their cause, many of Erik’s soldiers are mutant steriles who don’t believe in his methodology as it regards those of their gender, but who dislikes baseline humans enough to put up with it. It doesn’t help that the military is their meal ticket. Searching them would be nothing more than searching for disloyalty in a mind that was never loyal. The key is: will they _betray_ Erik? And that’s a far more complicated question that often can only be answered by giving them the opportunity: sometimes, people don’t know what decision they’ll make until they’re presented with the choice, and, in a case like that, telepaths can’t pull something from the mind that isn’t there.  
  
Erik sighs and scrubs a hand over his face, but it’s more from the strain the fine print is putting on his eyes than it is from the rebuff. “Fair enough. I think it would actually be best to assign someone to systematically offer bribes to all my officials, see who takes it. Those who do, you can scan.”  
  
That’s a much better plan. Once they’ve actually committed the offense, they’ll try to rationalize it, and that will force them to think things through more fully. “All right.”  
  
“The root of the problem, though: suggestions?”  
  
That’s no easy fix, but Erik knows that, or so says his tired smile when Charles stretches out a leg and nudges Erik’s foot with his own. It’s a small gesture of affection, but Erik soaks it in and plucks Charles’ hand off the armrest, cradling it in his own and pressing his fingers down the line of the ligaments connecting knuckles and wrist.  
  
The press of Erik’s fingers is soothing, and the lull of it prompts a bit of relaxation: the ease of reclining back in his chair and stretching his leg out fully, hooking his foot around Erik’s ankle. “You need to find a way to drain their power. I’d suggest economic: give government contracts to their rivals. Hell, subsidize competing industry. But drain their resources, and they’ll be too worried about their own pocketbooks to be offering bribes.”  
  
“It’s certainly a good start. Though, I suspect if I search long enough, I’ll find reason to have key members of all the houses detained. I’ll need to be careful about it, lest it looks like a concentrated offensive against the Southern nobility, but I think it’s possible.”  
  
“They’ll know you’re going after them. That’ll be impossible to hide.”  
  
“That’s fine, so long as I can effectively hamper all of them. But I’d rather the public at large not have proof of it.”  
  
“Fair point.”  
  
It’s a bit astounding, how well they work together now. So long as certain issues are avoided—and though it took some time, Erik has learned that it’s in his best interest not to waste his limited window of visitation on beleaguering those issues—they coordinate as well as they ever did when fighting Shaw. All it takes is sticking to mutually beneficial goals.  
  
It’s a tentative balance, but, for now, it’s holding.  
  
“I think—“ But the words are cut off when his back twinges and the baby kicks. Wincing, he rubs a hand over his back, kneading at the muscles and trying to work out the strain. It isn’t easy when his entire lower back is seizing and wringing the life out of his muscles.  
  
“Are you all right?”  
  
Erik’s face is a picture of concern, and, abandoning their game of touches under the table, he pulls his legs back and leans forward, bracing one hand on the back of the chair as though he can steady the situation as well as he can steady the furniture.  
  
If only. This pregnancy has been more temperamental than the first—Wanda and Pietro had been relatively easy, Erik’s absence notwithstanding—and the train ride today was particularly uncomfortable. Sitting for hours has apparently irritated the muscles.  
  
“I think I’d like a warm bath, if you don’t mind.” It’s a good job water in Westchester isn’t scarce: the number of baths he’s had drawn in the past few months has grown from indulgent to ridiculous. However, Westchester also doesn’t have the lovely bathing chamber that Erik’s rooms in Genosha have. Memories of that room aside—ignoring all thoughts concerning the morning after the wedding is usually a prudent course of action—it’s actually a delightful little space, and Erik always is willing to indulge him and spend time luxuriating in it.  
  
Erik is up on his feet almost before the request is made, and he obligingly pulls the chair back as Charles gets to his feet. As dangerous as allowing Erik to dote can sometimes be, tonight it feels like a necessary indulgence: Erik’s scent is soothing when he presses in close, and just this once, letting Erik scoop him up feels… if not _right_ , then deliciously enjoyable. Though, it’s not so easy for Erik to do these days, with the extra weight: he staggers a bit, and while snickering at him isn’t _polite_ , exactly, Erik takes it well enough, batting back with a mild glower and moving the two of them off for the washroom.  
  
In most ways relating to the physical, Erik is actually inclined to simplicity: he doesn’t favor the gaudy displays made by Shaw, and while the palace is well-furnished and attractive, the parts of it that were left up to Erik aren’t opulent. This bathroom is, oddly enough, his main indulgence. It had never been obvious during the campaign for Shaw, but in the years afterward, it’s become increasingly clear that Erik enjoys a good soak more than just about anything else.  
  
A good bout of sex, not surprisingly, still wins the day.  
  
To combine both of those things? In retrospect, it’s frankly a wonder that Erik didn’t try to fuck him in the bath on their wedding night, rather than in the bed. That they achieved a functional bath on the morning after is nearly a miracle.  
  
“Bit heavier than usual?” he asks as Erik sets him down on a bench to the side of the pool sunken into the floor. The bath hasn’t changed much in the past few years: it’s still decorated with blue and green tiles, meant to imitate waves, and the water continues to run warm and clean.  
  
Erik smiles warmly. “I’m not complaining.”  
  
“No doubt.” Erik loves him heavy and pregnant like this, and there will never, _never_ cease to be a degree of bitterness in knowing that. Never. Not when he can’t—gods, trying to undo his shirt and seeing his own stomach distended, huge and unwieldy—Erik might like it, but it’s just so… disconcerting.  
  
“Here. Let me.”  
  
Erik’s interference is almost expected at this point: he zones in on any distaste for the… hmm, the _current state of affairs_ , and he tries his best to soothe it away with touches and assurances. If it were a matter of worrying that Erik no longer finds him attractive, Erik’s efforts would possibly succeed.  
  
It isn’t about that at all.  
  
This—and Erik will never understand—is entirely due to looking at his body and not recognizing _himself_. It’s nine months of being in the wrong skin.  
  
And it’s miserable.  
  
“Is this all right?” Erik mutters, stretching up as he works at the shirt’s buttons. Quite all right, yes, having Erik’s lips brush at the underside of his jaw while Erik slowly gets on with working him free of his clothes. He tips his head back, giving Erik better access, and bracing his hands on Erik’s shoulders.  
  
It’s only a little bitter, starting things off this way.  
  
[ _Is this all right?]_ Erik again pushes in his direction, this time mentally.  
  
Just a few years ago, that question never would have been asked. Even now, it’s only due to the pregnancy. _Is this all right?_ Because, pregnant, there’s a risk to the baby. Because in such a _delicate_ —gods damn that notion—condition, things might be uncomfortable.  
  
Pregnancy is control, like conquering is control, like Erik never _allowed_ him control when it mattered most—  
  
This isn’t the time for this. Thoughts like that are constantly on the periphery, but they don’t need to intrude on every snatch of functional intimacy.  
  
“Very good,” he murmurs, laying his hands on either side of Erik’s face, smoothing back locks of his hair and stroking his thumbs over Erik’s jaw. This close, kissing Erik is a mere turn of the head, slotting their lips together for a quick press. “Finish it up. I want a bath.”  
  
“Mmmhmm.” And, accordingly, Erik’s hands work his trousers loose as the kiss turns more insistent, prompting Erik to arch up, rubbing their shoulders together: Erik slides fully up onto the bench, breaking the kiss only long enough to give a good tug to the trousers under his hands.  
  
Might as well shed both those and the shirt and once. The perks of having already been barefoot all evening: nothing to impede a quick strip.  
  
True to form—to his concern for requests made on account of pregnancy woes—Erik is quick to discard his own clothes as well and to hurry them along to the point where a bath is possible. Multi-tasker that he is, he finishes up quickly, kicking both their clothes to the side. One final lingering kiss, and then: “Ready?”  
  
“Bloody muscles _hurt_ : I couldn’t be readier.”  
  
Erik’s might just end up hurting tomorrow too, with all the lifting he’s doing. Too bad, though: he’s the one who created this situation, so he can damn well see it through, or, in the future, he can keep his dick to himself. But—mmmm, it’s so much easier to feel well-disposed to Erik when he’s being so helpful as to provide transportation to a pool of steaming water, which is bloody _fantastic_ on those aches and pains. That warm, liquid heat folding up over the hurt, and why did they wait until the evening to do this? Nestling up on the underwater bench, feeling Erik slip in alongside, being gathered up into Erik’s lap where the heat of the water and Erik’s scent can work together to curl around him and chase away any discomfort…  
  
Perfect.  
  
It’s been too long. If ever there’s another pregnancy, the ending months may need to be reworked: two weeks in Genosha every two months isn’t adequate during the stage when Erik’s presence is most biologically necessary. Being a pregnant bearer separated from his guardian is downright uncomfortable, more so as nature recognizes an increasing state of vulnerability and tries to drive him back into Erik’s arms, lest he remain unprotected while so immobile—because apparently Nature thinks that Erik would succeed in protecting him from anyone who could get through the hundreds of guards within the palace. Right.  
  
“Hmm. Be a love and get me off?”  
  
As if Erik would ever object to that. It’s good too, when—“Oh, _yes_ , like _that”—_ Erik’s hand twists just _right_ , thumb flicking at the head of Charles’ cock, squeezing this side of too hard in the delicious way that Erik has learned sets the nerves alight, and that has him arching his head back against Erik’s shoulder, mouthing at the skin there. It’s toe-curlingly good, better when he stretches his legs out, kicking a bit against the water and—oh— _yes—_  
  
Yes, thank you, _yes_ , “Gods, that’s good…”  
  
“Mmm.” Erik shifts under him, not taking any care to disguise his own hardness. “ _You_ are.”  
  
Good? No. Neither of them is good any longer. With everything it’s taken to manipulate Erik, and the mess they’ve made between them, tearing lands apart with their dysfunctional bond—good? No. Once, maybe, but the guilt is too thick for that to be the case any longer.  
  
“Want me to—?”  
  
Erik hums an affirmative. Though, he isn’t exactly answering the question: “Let me fuck you?”  
  
Oh, why not. Erik is always careful. Even prior to the pregnancy he was always careful, and he’s doubly so now. “If you go slow.”  
  
A kiss up under his ear, framed with a bit of teeth. “Of course.”  
  
Erik is as good as his word. The water slicks the way, and the relaxation of orgasm has ensured that things are open and easy: Erik slides up inside of him with very little trouble, slowly rolling his hips and seating himself as deep as he can go. Having already come, allowing Erik up inside him pushes to the point where he’s oversensitive, but Erik is gentle: times like these, it’s possible to melt a bit internally at the proof of his care. Reaching up, tangling fingers into Erik’s hair and grinding lazily down against him—it feels as good a reward for Erik’s attention as any. An exchange of services, but sweet, and intimate, with kisses and promises, and rubbing  his nose against Erik’s ear in the midst of wet, hot breathing.  
  
“Beautiful,” he mutters, tracing the curve of Erik’s ear with his fingers. “More.” With a little encouragement—a languid roll of the hips—Erik pushes up and thrusts a bit harder, steadying himself with his hands on either side of the bench, close enough to make it possible to press down on top of Erik’s hands, tangling their fingers together. “Go on, then,” he whispers thickly, biting at the curve of Erik’s jaw, panting as Erik’s pleasure sizzles down the bond and feeds into his own sensation. “Let go.”  
  
Charming, how Erik peaks on command. It’s a lovely little quirk that was only discovered after they’d finally gotten through the initial frantic edge that their coupling had taken, after they’d both begun to realize that their treaty allowed for this: sex that didn’t feel stolen.  
  
The deeper issue that belays is far more complicated: it’s proof of the fact that, during sex, Erik is as much in _his_ thrall as he is in Erik’s power—and that’s unbelievably heady. It’s one thing knowing that truth academically, but to watch Erik come apart under his hands time and time again bestows a whole new level of knowledge. If he wanted, he could easily put a knife up under Erik’s ribs when Erik is blissed out like this, high on endorphins and as entangled with the mechanics of the bond as his bearer is.  
  
It never lasts long: Erik abhors being vulnerable, in the sense of lacking control over himself so completely. Even in sleep he’s more guarded than this.  
  
Enough of this for the time being, then: Erik won’t let it last much longer. Time for things to taper back down to reality: he brushes a kiss to Erik’s cheek and tucks his hand back, squeezing at Erik’s side. Sometimes it helps to jolt Erik out of that post-orgasmic daze. “All right, Love?”  
  
“Mm. Perfect.” Satisfied enough to be getting on with, by the sound of it. “Do you want to soak a little longer, or would you rather we dry off?”  
  
Normally, soaking would sound preferable, but, despite how good the water feels, he’s actually feeling rather off. Not sick, but just poorly. An early night might help, especially since Erik will, understandably, want to spend time with the children in the morning. “Wash up and then perhaps turn in early, if you don’t mind?”  
  
Erik smiles against his cheek, giving him a firm pat against his side, despite the water’s resistance. “Of course.”  
  
It doesn’t take long. When he gives no indication that he wishes to draw out their bath, Erik falls in with the perfunctory sense surrounding the actions, washing his hair and getting Charles’ back, asking for help with his in turn, but the motions remain operational at the most basic level, with no hint of sex.  
  
It’s only once they’re both out of the bath and dried that he gives any hint of a hope for further evening activities. “You look well in that robe, you know,” he tosses out so carelessly that, at first glance, the compliment might be any one of the dozens that Erik lavishes on him on a daily basis. “Nice color.”  
  
Dark blue silk that reaches to the floor, with loose sleeves and a belted waist. It probably would have been wise to remember that Erik bought this robe for him and must have thus found it attractive. Too late now, though. “Thank you.” Said agreeably and reasonably, with nothing over which Erik might object. Toss in a kiss to Erik’s cheek, and allow Erik to pull him in close, and Erik will have no cause for complaint.  
  
That makes one of them: another cramp has him wincing.  
  
The touch that was moments ago looking to explore turns tender and protective, spanning his back as Erik spreads his hand out wide. “Are you all right?”  
  
He grimaces. “I’m feeling a little off tonight. I’m sorry, but—perhaps tomorrow?” After weeks away, Erik is predictably hoping for a night that stretches on a bit longer than this one has, but in the face of actual discomfort he, as expected, backs down with no protest whatsoever, dissolving instead into concern.  
  
“What’s wrong?” He brings his hands to cup Charles’ stomach.  
  
“Pregnancy, I’m afraid. Technically, the baby is a foreign presence in my body, and my systems recognize it as such. When growing another life, things are bound to occasionally be a little off.”  
  
Erik’s hands flex. “You’ll tell me if things get worse?”  
  
“Of course.”  
  
It’s a promise meant in good faith. There would be no reason to hide discomfort from Erik, when in many cases biology has equipped him to combat it. Erik does his best, anyway, offering a massage once they’ve tucked themselves away in bed. He does have such clever hands, and he’s both patient and dedicated, which makes for a very nice experience indeed: it’s the perfect recipe to draw up the curtain of sleep, and he’s drifting off under Erik’s hands without realizing it.  
  
Unfortunately, he doesn’t wake nearly as comfortably as he fell asleep.  
  
Waking isn’t comfortable at _all_.  
  
Fuck. This isn’t right. It—godsdamn it, has someone raked a knife through his abdomen? No, obviously not, but it’s the furthest thing from pleasurable. False contractions are a bitch. Except….  
  
Shit.  
  
What if they aren’t false?  
  
It’s early. _Far_ too early. There’s still a month to go. This doesn’t make sense. He’s been good, eaten all the right foods, and despite hating the whole experience of pregnancy, taken such _care_ for the baby’s sake. There were no accidents, no harmful activities. There’s no reason for an early labor.  
  
Flopping over in bed once the contraction passes, he bumps into Erik, who has been curled against his back with an arm slung over his waist. Erik grunts in his sleep and jolts, startled awake by the sudden movement. It’s a testament to the bond that he doesn’t lash out. The link between them will always recognize a mate, and though panic sparks through the bond, the most that Erik does is jerk awake with an especially enthusiastic tensing of limbs.  
  
“Charles?”  
  
“ _Erik_.” How absolutely stupid. The baby could be coming, and all he can do is whine his husband’s name because his throat feels as though it’s closing up. What if he’s done something to hurt the baby? Should they not have had sex earlier? The doctors had said it would be fine….  
  
But, pitiful or not, the pain in his voice drags Erik fully into awareness. “What’s wrong?” As shameful as it is to admit, it’s comforting to hear the command in his voice, in that demand for answers. His hands are just as efficient, skimming along any flesh they can reach and settling over the bulge where the baby is.  
  
“Erik, it _hurts_. The baby—I think I need the doctor.”  
  
He could mentally call Hank himself, but nothing feels possible. The dark is suffocating, and it’s easier to let Erik roll out of bed and take off for the door, yanking it open and striding out into the room beyond. There’s the echo of another bang as he throws open the outer door, and then the noise of him barking out commands laced with a few choice obscenities when he’s not obeyed quickly enough for his liking. Good. Someone will fetch Hank, and Hank will fetch the obstetrician with whom he’s working in conjunction, and they’ll find a way to stop what really feels a whole lot like labor.  
  
Erik is back by the side of the bed almost before his voice stops echoing through the outer chambers. “All right?” he asks, leaning over the bed.  
  
Better now, actually, since that the contraction has passed. Though, a bit overheated and sweaty. He’d been cold when he’d gone to bed, and so he’d kept the robe on, but now it’s simply a tangle, and thrashing doesn’t do much to discard it. Bloody thing won’t let go—  
  
“Thank you,” he mutters when Erik tugs the folds of fabric aside and helps him discard the covers. Might as well keep the robe on, considering they’re about to have company. “And I’m all right. Just—it’s too early.”  
  
“A month.”  
  
“Yes, thank you for noting.” That isn’t fair: there’s no reason to snap. This isn’t Erik’s fault. “Sorry.”  
  
“It’s fine, Charles. Is there anything I can get you?”  
  
“Nothing. Just… the doctor will be here soon, right?”  
  
“He damn well _better_ be,” Erik growls, ducking away from the bed to flick on a bedside lamp. The light glows soft and warm in the dark of the room, reflecting off the stone of the chamber. This room never did learn to be welcoming, no matter how much Erik—or his staff, as it’s difficult to imagine Erik bothering overmuch with the decoration—has tried over the years to make it seem a home.  
  
“This one will be a proper Genoshan native, then,” he says, just for something to _say_ , damn it, but Erik frowns in the lamplight. Though he hesitates for a moment, he seems to dismiss whatever his misgiving was, and paces around the bed. Like this, Erik is close enough to touch, and he’s amenable to it as well, taking the hand he’s offered and stroking the back of it with his thumb.  
  
“Wanda and Pietro _should_ have been born in Genosha.”  
  
If Erik had gotten his way—which he didn’t. Though, it’s easier to feel charitable toward Erik’s insulting past attempts to shepherd him into seclusion in Genosha during the twins’ pregnancy when Erik begins stroking his sweaty hair back off his forehead. Still, that doesn’t mean he’s going to agree with Erik: “Pietro is your heir: you got what you wanted regardless.”  
  
Erik huffs, but he doesn’t let up on his petting. “My family spends a good portion of its time apart from me, and one of my children can’t stand me. You think I have what I want?”  
  
Bloody hell, now is _not_ the time for this, and that really just makes it all the worse: in pain, annoyed, and would anyone _not_ snarl back at that? “Wanda is smart, Erik: you may love her just as much as Pietro, but she can already tell you aren’t going to treat her the same, even if she can’t yet figure why. You think it’ll get easier when she gets older and understands your view on bearers? You think— _fuuuck_!”  
  
Another contraction.  
  
It was like this with Wanda and Pietro too. Erik, who had been allowed into Westchester for the weeks surrounding the birth, had been just as attentive then too, allowing Charles to squeeze his hand so tightly that afterward it had been bruised for upwards of a week. He’d petted and soothed, and he’d wiped Charles’ face with a cloth, and had generally actually been a help throughout the birth, despite the frustration that had been simmering much closer to the surface than it is now. The twins’ birth had been remarkably helpful in easing Erik into actually accepting the broken state of things: now, while things aren’t perfect, they cooperate during the time that they’re together, pushing to the back of their minds the ever-existent issues that undergird their relationship. It hadn’t been like that in the beginning.  
  
“Where’s the bloody doctor?!” he pants in the aftermath, drooping into Erik’s hold when it’s offered, Erik having bodily climbed into bed and stretched out next to him.  
  
“Coming. And if he doesn’t get here soon, I’ll eviscerate him and hang him from the battlements, all right?”  
  
“That’s sweet, but I think I’d prefer something with less entrails.”  
  
Despite the anxiety that’s clearly clogging his throat, Erik laughs. “Whatever you want, Darling.”  
  
“Too damn right.” Because, right now, he absolutely deserves to have his every whim seen to and accommodated. He never wanted this, never wanted to be pregnant….  
  
The door to the outer room slams open first, and they both whistle out a sigh of relief, almost exactly as Hank comes bursting into the inner room. “Charles—“  
  
Lolling his head to the side on Erik’s shoulder, he meets Hank’s eye. “It’s too early, Hank.”  
  
Hank, for all his nerves, is a fully capable physician, as is the man trailing behind him. Though, the second doctor is really more a precaution, allowed on the basis of Hank’s nerves at not being specially trained in childbirth. “Early, yes, but a month isn’t impossible, and the baby should be fine, and this might be a false labor anyway, and—“  
  
“And you will immediately determine what is the cause and the status of the proceedings,” Erik cuts him off, “Or I will see to it that your life becomes very unpleasant very quickly.”  
  
Hank pales. “Yes, M’Lord.”  
  
Erik just grunts and strokes a hand down Charles’ stomach, kneading at the side of the bump where he can feel that Charles has tensed. Not taking his eyes from Hank, he lays his cheek against Charles’ hair and waits while Hank approaches.  
  
As it turns out, the labor is very real—and coming on fast. There’s no way to be sure quite what caused it, Hank admits, but there’s no stopping it now. They can test later to find the cause, to keep it from happening next time—if there is a next time—and for now they can deal with the situation at hand.  
  
And they do.  
  
For seven hours.  
  
It’s a quick labor when one considers that Wanda and Pietro took sixteen hours of screaming and threats and him promising Erik that this would never, never be allowed to happen again. Luckily, the baby is turned the right way, neck free from any strangulation from the umbilical cord, and while the birth itself is the kind of agony that has him once against swearing this incident will never be repeated, there are no life-threatening complications.  
  
The baby is small, though. That much is obvious from the moment it slides into the arms of the other physician who is working under Hank’s watchful eye. It isn’t crying either, and despite the sheer exhaustion tugging down on his limbs, he cranes his head, frantic to see the baby. Why isn’t there noise? What—? “What’s wrong? Why isn’t it…?” But the physician frowns worriedly and turns away, blocking the sight of the baby with his body.  
  
Erik, who is perched by the side of the bed where he was well positioned to mop away sweat, angles his body to allow him a view of the physician’s progress, though he doesn’t move from his place.  
  
“Erik?” There’s something wrong. Why isn’t the baby crying? They’re supposed to cry. Is it dead? Please, please don’t be dead. “Erik, what’s wrong? Let me see the baby!”  
  
But Erik is growing stiffer by the moment, tensing up and sliding to the side where he too is blocking any view of the baby. Reaching out and grabbing at his back does no good: he’s immovable as ever, despite any number of blows to his back. “Give me my child, Erik!”  
  
The squall that suddenly pierces through the air may possibly be the most beautiful sound known to mankind.  
  
The tension rushes out of Erik’s limbs, and he sinks back onto the side of the bed. It puts him in easier hitting distance, but he doesn’t seem to register the hand digging into his clothes, tugging and demanding attention. It takes a few good smacks to Erik’s back before he finally looks down. “It’s all right,” he soothes, face softening when confronted with his husband’s frantic efforts to peer around him toward the baby. He takes the details in a little _too_ well: he pulls back and frowns, evidentially not liking what his sudden awareness has shown him. “Stop that: you’ll hurt yourself. For godsake, Charles, you’ve just given birth.”  
  
Yes. Exactly. Erik seems to be the one missing the point: birth means a _baby_ , who is decidedly out of view. Such a state of affairs is completely unacceptable.  
  
“You did so well,” Erik murmurs, leaning down to kiss his forehead.  
  
It’s worth accepting the affection and leaning back into the pillow when pushed there by Erik’s careful hands, if only because he _is_ exhausted. But the baby….  
  
Hank understands. Erik may as well, but he’s not the one who brings the child over, swaddled in a pristine white blanket. Oh, yes, that’s perfect, his baby, close at hand where it should be, where he can reach it, and crying so beautifully that it’s nearly reason to weep right along with the child.  
  
Immediately, though, one thing is very apparent: their child has a shock of green hair so violent in color that he almost has to blink twice to believe it. How beautifully, wonderfully perfect. His darling child, unique from the first. Of course: it couldn’t be otherwise, when their children are obviously meant for great things.  
  
“It’s a girl,” Hank says, nervously trying to step around Erik so as to hand the child over. Erik is nowhere near as willing: it’s probably a bit instinctual, trying to ward others away from his vulnerable mate—but biology be damned. It’s only a delay, when Erik’s posturing is keeping the baby further away.  
  
“She’s perfect,” he whispers, grabbing a hold of Erik’s hip for balance and trying to stretch out to reach her. But Erik, who’s naturally quicker at the moment, intercepts and takes their daughter from Hank, apparently willing to compromise by keeping Hank away and bringing Charles the baby himself. Fine. Whatever, so long as Erik gives her over _now._  
  
“She is,” Erik agrees quietly. He lowers the baby downward, waiting until Charles firms his arms up around their daughter before letting go and transferring her weight.  
  
She’s lighter than she should be. At a month early, she should have had more time to grow. But… she looks normal enough, and her lungs sound perfectly healthy now that she’s gotten going. And those perfect little fingers with their tiny nails, peeking out from the blankets. Oh, she’s splendid. Absolutely, stunningly perfect.  
  
“Lorna?” he asks, glancing at Erik. They’d discussed names prior, but it’s polite to make certain.  
  
Erik nods, eyes fixed on their daughter. He’s so seldom like this: there’s an openness to him here, and while it begins with wide, wet eyes, it extends to his posture as a whole, and to the singularity of his focus as he takes in every detail of their daughter.  
  
It’s true what Erik says: guardian, bearer, or sterile, he loves all his children. Maybe he isn’t capable of treating them the same, but that isn’t born out of a lack of love for any of them.  
  
They’ll have to wait to get her blood work back to find out whether she’s a bearer or sterile, of course, but already Erik is unabashedly entranced. Would it have been different if he didn’t already have Pietro? Perhaps. It isn’t worth thinking on. There are plenty of problems as it is, not the least that things with Lorna could easily go as they have with Wanda.  
  
Not today, though. Today, there’s just Erik scooting up on the bed with him, stroking at Lorna’s cheek while being careful not to rest his elbow anywhere that might do damage. He knows well enough that there’s still the afterbirth to expect, and also that things are going to be horridly sore for a while. A man’s hips simply aren’t made to do this, and the recovery time reflects that.  
  
“Such a loud sound for such a little creature,” Erik muses, tone heavy with wonder. “Look at that hair.”  
  
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” And if he sounds as awe-struck as Erik, no one will mock him for it. “She’s healthy, isn’t she, Hank?”  
  
Hank, who is lingering in the background, nods. “Yes. We’ll need to monitor her, of course, just to be sure, since she’s a bit small and might be more susceptible to illness, but I don’t see anything to be concerned about at this stage.”  
  
Erik, predictably, takes just long enough to hear Hank pronounce her healthy before turning away and back to Lorna. “Look at what we made, Charles.”  
  
One of the greatest four accomplishments ever. There are a lot of mistakes between the two of them, but it would appear that they’re very good at _this_.  
  
It isn’t perfect, what he and Erik have, but, as he reaches up and presses a kiss to Erik’s jaw, laying his other hand on Erik’s cheek, it’s difficult not to imagine that some good has come from it. These beautiful babies. Their relationship will never be perfect, but their children certainly will be.  
  
Erik leans into the touch, turning briefly to brush a kiss against his palm. “I—Charles, I adore you. _Look_ at what you did.” His eyes are glued to Lorna, and there’s a definite wetness to them now. Not tears, but undisguised emotion nevertheless.  
  
What he’s done could fill a book. Some things good, some bad, and mostly just a matter of trying to muddle through life. Though, it isn’t difficult to imagine why Erik sees him as perfect right this minute. When Moira had David, he’d been the same: so utterly mesmerized by what she’d given him.  
  
Erik always wanted that too. He’d wanted a family, and—it’s so broken, what happened, but there’s always hope. Always the children, and…  
  
He and Erik may never get things quite right, that doesn’t mean things will always be _wrong_.


	39. Epilogue (Part Two)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow. I can't believe I've finally finished posting this thing. I'm probably going to eventually go back through and edit bits throughout the story, since the entire thing is without a beta, and I know I've made mistakes. For now, though, here it is! 
> 
> A couple of comments on the story itself: believe it or not, this was actually part of a three-part... eh, series? I'm not sure I could call it a series, since the stories themselves are unrelated. Basically, I wanted to play around with a couple of core ideas and plug them into different circumstances. So, I actually have two other stories sitting in my inbox (one around 400 pages long, the other about 150) that may or may not ever see the light of day. This was the one that I figured out how to end first, so it's the one that was posted. 
> 
> Thank you so, so much to everyone who stuck with me throughout this. I know it's been a bumpy ride in places. I'm grateful for you all taking the time to comment and letting me know that you found this worth reading. It means a lot to me.

As it turns out, the cause of Lorna’s breathing troubles was nothing more than a blocked airway. Erik and the doctors offer reassurance on that point over and over in the next few weeks, explaining how she’s as healthy as can be expected for a premature baby—in good health, if a little small—and that she’ll likely grow up just fine. Though it’s comforting, Charles keeps her close, holding her nearly continuously for the first week or so, relinquishing her only to Erik on occasion, and then always keeping him within shouting distance.  
  
Eventually, though, life intrudes: though Lorna’s premature birth was, at the time, primarily important on account of her safety, three weeks after the fact it’s also proving to throw all matters of the kingdom into a whirlwind.  
  
On account of the potential for a political fracture, both he and Erik had agreed at the time of the twins’ birth that it was a good idea to call the influential figures of each region forward to swear loyalty a few weeks after each birth. They may send someone in their stead to make their promises, but the reaffirmation of their oath is the key point.  
  
In this case, with Lorna’s birth occurring early, it’s meant quite a lot of scrambling. It’s really down to some excellent planning on the part of Erik’s aides that this was managed in such a timely fashion. So many invitations to send, accommodations to be made and rooms aired out, menus to be set, speeches to be planned… In many ways, though, it could not have come at a better time.  
  
Oaths having already been sworn—four damn hours of varying levels of sincerity wrapped in a guise of unwavering loyalty—Erik is occupied with showing off all three of his children. Pietro clings enthusiastically to his leg, lapping up the attention and taking great pleasure in being told how handsome and kingly he looks in his little doublet. Wanda, while far less enthusiastic, appears to also be taking advantage of the event… to size up every single noble with terrifying solemnity for a toddler. Lorna, for her part, intermittently cries, nuzzles against Erik, and necessitates an intervention by Jean when an unpleasant smell begins to drift from her general direction.  
  
Hmm. Well. Let Erik deal with the less pleasant aspects of child rearing. He’s changed diapers, but it’s always with the hope of someone who knows it’s a rare occurrence. To be fair, it’s difficult to blame him: he’s not exposed to the children often enough to become well-practiced, and he’d certainly endure the dirty diapers for the sake of more time with his children.  
  
For the moment, though, the important thing is that the children are safe and cared for, and Erik is otherwise occupied. It’s taken time, but Erik no longer relentlessly dogs Charles’ footsteps with quite the same fervency as previously: if they’re in the same set of rooms and Erik can sense his presence through the bond, he’s content to leave off physical shepherding. It allows a bit of freedom to mingle at these functions—which is a vital advantage in light of today’s goals.  
  
Goals that Erik, by necessity, knows nothing about.  
  
“Lord Essex.”  
  
As startled as Essex may act, it’s nothing but that: an _act_. Essex has been subtly trailing him with his gaze the entire evening. It’s a good thing Erik hasn’t noticed, but, luckily, Essex has confined himself mostly to lurking in the background. Erik had known he’d be coming to the ceremony, but Erik has a habit of underestimating the damage that can be done by non-militant individuals. Essex might not be a solider, but as the head of a very powerful house, he’ll have the potential to recruit and arm a large number of followers if it comes to that. Intellectually Erik might know of that danger, but practically—the realization of what it _means_ simply escapes him. He bloody well wouldn’t have tried to conquer the North so quickly if he’d really understood the danger the Southern nobles posed.  
  
But it isn’t only _Erik’s_ kingdom that is threatened. If Erik loses the throne to a rebellion from the South…  
  
It doesn’t bear thinking about.  
  
Upon being greeted, Essex quickly makes a show of composing himself, tucking his hands behind his back and bowing shallowly. He’s a sunken-faced, dark-eyed character of a man, but there’s no mistaking the calculation in each move he makes. This is a man who _thinks._ It doesn’t help that he’s also obscenely wealthy and not afraid of showing it, as the rather gaudy velvet jacket he’s wearing shows. Expensively made, well cut, but indicating a taste—or a lack of taste—for show over class.  
  
“My Lord,” Essex returns, reverently enough that most people would overlook the shallowness of his bow.  
  
But that’s not how this game is played.  
  
Leave the weapons to Erik; this is a game to be played by those well versed in confrontation solely of the mind.  
  
Just the same, it isn’t remiss to know where Erik is: it wouldn’t do to have him interrupt—but a quick glance confirms that he’s busy speaking with Logan, who has escorted his ward, Anna Marie, to the ceremony. The children seem quite taken with her, and rightly so: she has a lovely mind. “Shall we take a walk?”  
  
Essex nods slowly, curling his lips back away from his teeth in a smile that no one would find agreeable. In most cases looks don’t belay personality, but Essex really is as ugly as he is personally detestable. “Are you certain your husband won’t be wanting you?”  
  
Ah. It’s to be one of _those_ conversations then. It’s disappointing to think that Essex has relegated him to the level of puppet at best and reasonably intelligent whore at worst, but he’s hardly the first to do so. And, as insulting as that is, it will make things much easier.  
  
 _[My husband is well occupied elsewhere. But I appreciate your concern for his needs.]_ Pity they don’t extend to a concern for Erik’s political needs as well.  
  
Essex jerks at the brush against his mind. Like most of the kingdom, he’s well aware of what talents Westchester’s monarch possesses, but so many people often assume Charles doesn’t use his gifts. A ridiculous assumption: he uses them often and well, and while Erik can feel their use, in a room this busy, Erik is accustomed to sensing him dipping in and out of people’s minds. He won’t give it a second thought. He certainly won’t object to it, as most people assume. It’s pure, stupid fear that has them thinking that—that has them believing Erik bars him from using his gift. Just because so many others fear telepaths doesn’t mean that Erik does likewise.  
  
“In that case,” Essex agrees, nodding magnanimously, _[I do believe we’d best continue this discussion elsewhere.]_  
  
Interesting. It’s not well-known that Essex harbors mental abilities of his own: while it’s common knowledge that he’s a mutant, he plays rather close to the vest with the extent of what he can do. It took some very careful reconnaissance led by Frost to determine precisely what he was capable of doing.  
  
Casually, Essex falls into step beside him when Charles begins wandering to the side of the room, slipping into another room attached via a doorless opening in the wall. The network of rooms is in the shape of a U, and, set up like a gallery, it allows them to move easily out of Erik’s sight without needing to slip out any doors. That only comes at the very end. However, the final room is filled with refreshments and is thus quite busy: no one recognizes their exit with any greater interest than a few sidelong glances.  
  
It’s chilly out in the corridor: thank the gods for the foresight of selecting heavy clothing—in this case a padded silk robe. The rationale behind it had far more to do with hiding the bit of weight around his midsection that lingers from pregnancy: a stupid, vain worry, but it’s so utterly bizarre, trying to address pregnancy weight. Erik harps on and on about it being perfectly natural, but it doesn’t _feel_ that way. The robe had felt comforting in its heaviness: made of a dark blue silk outer with a thick cloth lining, it doesn’t cling. It’s fitted, though, tailored around the shoulders with a high collar, with silver hooks spaced every few inches along its opening down the front, all the way from his throat down to about knee level. Erik quite likes the garment, if the heat in his eyes when they dressed earlier in the day is any indication.  
  
Pity, but Essex seems to like it too.  
  
The greater pity is unfortunately that, judging by his interest, Essex is going to be pathetically predictable in what he’s expecting. He wouldn’t be running his gaze over his opponent’s body if this were _Erik_ matched toe to toe with him out in a corridor.  
  
Nothing to be had for it, though—and there are always advantages to being underestimated.  
  
“I wouldn’t think His Majesty would approve of your exit,” Essex muses after several seconds of silence. The lack of noise expands to fill the hallway, enlarging the space in the mind’s perception. Things always tend to feel cavernous with a lack of sound.  
  
Watching Essex, he squares his shoulders and wrangles a thin smile onto his face. “I also doubt he’d approve of you stockpiling weapons in preparation to foment rebellion in the South.”  
  
Consider _that_ , then. Niceties need not be added.  
  
Essex startles, but he regains himself quickly, planting his feet perhaps a fraction more carefully than before, though no one would venture to go so far as to call it a battle stance. Wary, but still not the position of a man facing an equal. Give it time: he’ll learn. “You don’t pull punches do you, Xavier?”  
  
Dropping the formal titles, then. Fair enough. “I find that doing so wastes time.” _[Better to be blunt—and I’ll do you that courtesy: you will end your attempts to undermine my husband’s rule, or I will see to it that you quickly discover precisely how far you have to fall.]_  
  
If Essex had any sense at all, he’d recognize the veracity of that threat. In the past couple of years, even those who would prefer not to see a bearer sit on the throne have at least noted that gender does not necessarily dampen a threat. Essex may have been deep in the South a little too long: distance isn’t the buffer he so obviously thinks it is, and, even if it were, distance won’t atone for his foolishness in overlooking a threat on account of not having yet had to face it.  
  
It’s disheartening how Essex lips widen, bearing his teeth as he plasters on an indulgent smile. It’s a disgusting smile, molded out of thick, full lips, with tiny flecks of crusted spittle caught at the corners. Though his teeth are remarkably white for a middle-aged man, it isn’t enough to soften the rest of the picture.  
  
 _[Of everyone in this world, Xavier, I thought you’d have the best reason to see your husband overthrown.]_  
  
“Then you don’t understand politics.”  
  
 _[I understand that if your husband were dead, you’d be free to do as you like.]_  
  
Not that Essex is giving that much consideration. For him it’s merely an abstract concept, this idea of free agency. Nothing could be clearer: if he were willing to view a bearer as someone with a mind, he wouldn’t be slinking in close now as though it’s his right.  
  
If this is the game he wants to play, so be it.  
  
In spite of the repulsive nature of Essex’s presence, letting him close is a matter of self-control. There’s an endgame to this, and, as distasteful as it is, it’s necessary: Essex moves in, crowding him back toward the wall. Let him come, a little closer….  
  
Let Essex see what he wants to see: it will blind him to everything else until the most opportune moment.  
  
“I’d let you have Westchester for your own,” Essex half-croons, settling a hand on Charles’ waist and flexing his gnarled fingers with a slight pinch. There’s a bit of excess post-pregnancy weight there, but Essex’s grin only widens when he feels it. Biological response? Perhaps. Guardians like to see evidence of fertility in bearers. “All yours, without any of the restrictions your husband puts on you.”  
  
It’s a lie. The evidence proving that hovers in his mind: Essex may be a bit of a telepath himself, but he’s sloppy with it, used to being the only telepathic mind in a room, and that’s showing now, with how he’s bleeding over. Might be that he simply doesn’t care: many people believe that Erik’s presence through the bond checks the use of any telepathy. Stupid of them to assume that: if they thought it through, they’d understand that Erik actively encourages its use as a means to detect the sort of plot Essex believes he can successfully foster.  
  
Tipping his head back and laying the back of his skull against the wall, he allows Essex to root around against his throat like a pig seeking a meal. Does he think this is seductive? Gods, his wife is to be pitied if that’s the case. Erik may not be perfect, but at least he’s a talented lover who’s learned to be considerate in recent years. Not like Essex, who is fumbling about, clumsy in his eagerness. It’s worse, too, when Essex moves to brace his hands on the wall on either side of Charles’ body. Being boxed in is never pleasant, but this is all to make a point, and that’s worth it.  
  
“I—would you?” he asks, careful to keep his voice half-skeptical, but decidedly interested. “Give me my kingdom?”  
  
Essex smiles into his skin, widening that expression when Charles tentatively brushes at the front of his trousers. Hard already. Gods almighty. Eager, isn’t he? Disgusting. Stupid too, if he doesn’t realize that even if Erik were utterly horrible, he’s stunningly attractive: there would be no sense in trading young and handsome for aging and disagreeable when Essex is hardly a good man.  
  
“Of course I would.”  
  
Right. Not in _this_ world. And, on that note, Essex has gone far enough.  
  
Closing his fingers down over the front placket of Essex’s trousers, he clenches his fist and ices up his expression, holding firm when Essex emits a startled—and decidedly agonized—gasp.  
  
Apparently, the price of getting in close is not to Essex’s liking.  
  
Good.  
  
“You might think I’m weak,” he hisses, speaking up near Essex’s ear. “That is your prerogative. But I don’t have to behave like what you think I _am_. So, believe what you want, but know this: when you interfere in my husband’s affairs, you interfere in _my_ affairs. I have a vested interest in ensuring that Erik stays in power. And your attempts to interfere with that…” He sighs. “You aren’t untouchable. In the last few weeks, I’ve taken the opportunity given to me by my extended period of rest to trace back the money in your accounts to its source.” He tightens his grip; Essex’s face purples. It probably isn’t the only part of him that’s purpling. “Your partners have paid you to supply them with guns. A rare commodity, and, as it turns out, rarer than I originally thought. _Plastic_ guns, hmmm? Clever. Or it would have been if you weren’t purposely leaving a paper trail that could be used to incriminate your allies, were anyone to look too closely. In one sense I suppose that’s smart: if matters are arrested before the point at which you hoped to set your plot into motion, someone else would take the fall. Unfortunately for you, it also means that all it would take is a few hints to the right people in your inner circle, get them to start looking in the right places and find out what you’ve been doing to incriminate them… They’d kill you far before Erik ever had the chance.”  
  
Abruptly, he releases his grip and ducks to the side. The wall rasps against the silk of the robe, but it doesn’t catch, and moments later he’s free and in the middle of the hallway. Essex remains facing the all, hands propped against the stone, but there’s a decided shivering in his shoulders, and his sides expand and fall as he gasps for breath.  
  
“And I forgot to mention: the factory from which your source obtains the plastic—it’s been taken to task for failing to properly pay its taxes. A government audit team took a closer look, and it turns out the company also can’t account for where a good five percent of its product is going. You and I both know it’s going to your supplier… but I’d say, oh, early this morning, that government team also found where it _was_ going. Your supplier is in a right spot of trouble—and I bet he’ll talk.”  
  
Essex’s shoulders have been growing more and more tense with each successive word, but at the final threat, he lurches around, eyes half mad with rage—and more than a little desperation. “You godsdamn little bitch—“  
  
How disappointing: he doesn’t move as quickly as he might have if he weren’t sore between the legs, and when he tries to hurl himself forward to deliver a blow, it’s appallingly easy to duck, dodge the blow, and then give him a good shove from behind and send him sprawling to the floor.  
  
Though, watching him heave himself over proves to be pitiful enough to engender a small measure of pity.  
  
“If I’d known you were so eager to be your husband’s puppet for the rest of your days—“  
  
Perhaps not so much pity. Damn it, why is it _always_ about Erik? “My husband is very clever.” One step brings him within kicking distance of Essex—though Essex isn’t worth the further effort. Apparently Essex sees he possibility, though, and he digs his nails down into the floor, though he’s otherwise motionless. “But he’s better on a battlefield than he is at statecraft. He’d rather simply have you executed, or perhaps assassinated. But _glad_ I don’t parrot his desires. Or perhaps you might wish that I did. Because while he might kill you? If you keep this up, I will _take you apart_. I will tear apart every bit of your wealth and your life, if that is what it takes to keep the regions stable. I won’t see another civil war.”  
   
Essex grimaces, and the sallow skin of his face contorts around the bones. “If you killed him—“  
  
“I don’t _want_ to kill him. I love my husband, and we’ve reached a workable accord.” Not a perfect one by any means, but if he couldn’t bring himself to kill Erik at the height of their disagreement, he sure as hell isn’t going to do so now. “Though, I quite understand why you hope I’ll snap and change my mind: if he finds out what you tried to do a few minutes ago, he’d gut you alive.”  
  
“You _love_ him?” That is evidently something Essex doesn’t believe: he laughs openly and bitterly, clambering slightly more upright until he’s on his knees. It’s an uneven movement, but he eventually gains a measure of stability.  
  
But Essex is not owed an explanation. He is not owed political reasoning, nor an account of his rulers’ relationship. All he needs to know is the consequences of his own actions. “Erik once gave me a rather unique gift, you know,” he begins, effecting thoughtfulness. Damn the depth of the pockets of these robes, but—oh, there it is. Wouldn’t matter if he lost it anyway: Erik could always find it again for him. “This.”  
  
Essex’s eyes zero in on the chess piece when it’s displayed in front of him, tall and proud in the palm of Charles’ hand. It’s as splendid as the day Erik made it for him: a perfect queen piece of gleaming and detailed metal.  
  
“The most visible piece on the board is not always the most powerful, Essex. You’d do well to remember that.”  
  
And then, closing his fist around the chess piece, he backs up. Though it takes a moment, Essex gets the hint and, with a grunt and obvious wounded dignity, he heaves himself to his feet, brushing off his trousers as he goes.  
  
“You may discount my rule because of what I am, but that does not make me any less prepared to do what is necessary to see the good of my kingdom maintained. I’ve struck a beneficial deal with my husband, and I _will_ see it protected. Do not attempt to interfere with that. This will be your only warning.”  
  
By this point Essex ought to be cowering, but it is often the case with proud men that they don’t realize when they’re thoroughly beaten. Erik is the same way, even if he’s more polished and refined in his manners. Though, it’s a credit to him that he doesn’t look half insane when challenged.  
  
Or perhaps that’s less of a credit to Erik and more of an insult to Essex.  
  
“I’ll tell him,” Essex snarls. “You’re downright unnatural, trying to pull the strings of regions behind your guardian’s back—“  
  
That’s really rather a poor last attempt at an argument. Essex may underestimate him on account of his status as a bearer, but he would hardly have cared about the unnatural nature of making such a deal if the deal had benefited _him_.  
  
“By all means, do tell Erik what happened here,” he says, cutting Essex off. Tucking his arms into a fold, he picks at the cuff of his robe and rolls his eyes. Pietro is the master of that gesture, and perhaps it’s catching. “Do you think you’ll survive past telling him that you tried to feel me up?”  
  
If Essex could pale he probably would, but the sallowness of his skin isn’t conducive. He swallows instead, glaring, and never quite recovers: he’s essentially tripping over himself to answer when he again begins to speak, and it shows in the sloppiness of his reply: “You play at being a king, but you’ll go crying to your guardian when it suits you.”  
  
Only if it’s a valid tactical response. In this case, it is: Essex is apparently rattled enough that he hasn’t yet figured it out, but the main reason for allowing him to make any sort of sexual advance was grounded in extortion. Let him try that, and if all else fails, it’ll be worth persuading him with his fear of what would happen should the King of Genosha understand precisely what was attempted.  
  
It’s always wise to have options.  
  
All the same… “I don’t need my husband to protect me. I could turn your mind inside out with a frankly disturbing minimum of effort. I simply want you to understand that you have no recourse in Erik. Either you do as I say, or you’re ruined. Make your choice.”  
  
Ah, and _that_ is what it finally takes to sink the point in successfully. Essex doesn’t acknowledge his surrender verbally, but he recoils back, glaring, and he drops his eyes. He’s breathing like a bellows over a fire, but the effort of it appears mostly for nothing.  
  
“I hope I haven’t cause to hear your name again, Lord Essex.”  
  
The highest insult that can be offered is to turn his back to Essex, and it’s precisely what he does. Keeping close tabs on Essex’s mind, lest he try to attack from behind, negates the gumption of the motion, but to Essex’s disturbed nerves, he likely won’t realize that. Even if he did, leaving him alone and furious in a hallway is sufficient insult—and it’s also a relief: his fuming chokes up the space so completely that a non-telepath could detect it.  
  
Slipping into the room beyond isn’t exactly an escape from emotion, but it’s preferable to Essex’s concentrated hatred. It’s helpful that the room is every bit as crowded as it was earlier: a few people nearest the door notice his entrance, but a quick smile draws out their worry and dissipates it. _Just gave birth_ one of them thinks. _Bound to need to excuse himself, recovering as he is_. A completely inaccurate explanation, but a functional one. Let them think he’s weak and delicate: as was the case with Essex, it makes it all the easier to maintain a degree of control when competence is so unexpected.  
  
As easy was it was to slip into the room without any significant detection, it’s even simpler with Erik. Having moved back across the multiple to rooms to where Erik is still engaged talking to Logan, he allows himself a quick grin at the sight of Erik’s mounting tension: Erik evidently doesn’t find it easy to keep up a conversation while wrangling three children. His shoulders seem to be rising higher and higher by the moment, growing tenser with every movement the children make.  
  
“Sorry, Love,” he murmurs, slipping in at Erik’s side and reaching out to take Lorna. “Needed to use the restroom.”  
  
As soon as Erik catches sight of him, his face washes over with obvious relief and he hands Lorna over eagerly. She’s grown fussy, whimpering and twisting against the cloth wrapped about her. As it is, she’s young to be out in public, and the constant noise and activity must be trying for her. It’s no wonder she’s fussy.  
  
She settles when he takes her. Nothing too unfixable, then: poor girl only wanted her bearer. “There now,” he soothes, swaying back and forth and cradling Lorna against his chest as her fussing tapers off and she takes instead to curling her tiny, uncoordinated fingers against his robe. “Nothing so dire as you thought, hmm, Little Love?” If only all problems were as uncomplicated as those experienced by an infant.  
  
“Daddy!”  
  
Ah. Well, it was only a matter of time. Frankly, it’s a wonder Pietro has remained relatively still for this long—and that’s being kind. Pietro is never what anyone would call unobtrusive, and when he remains in one place, it’s really just a matter of having concentrated his hyperactivity into one spot: clearly, Erik’s frayed nerves are justified. And Logan, damn him, probably had something to do with it—he’s horrid about encouraging Pietro—if his pleased smirk is anything to go by.  
  
“Logan wants to gimme a _sword_ ,” he declares proudly, tumbling forward and smacking into Charles’ legs, where he enthusiastically tugs at the robes.  
  
It may be time to give Logan a lengthy deployment. _[I wasn’t gone_ that _long]_ he pushes in Erik’s direction, sighing as Pietro babbles on about weaponry. _[And in that time you’ve allowed your general to promise our child a dangerous weapon. Care to explain?]_  
  
Erik grimaces as he slips an arm around Charles’ waist. “Logan was actually just leaving.”  
  
“I’ll bet.” With the damage already done? No doubt Logan is leaving: when it comes to the twins, he’s far too fond of lighting a fire and stepping back while a creative bout of parenting becomes necessary to douse the madness.  
  
Neither Pietro nor Wanda picks up on the intricacies of what is happening, although Pietro frowns crossly at not receiving confirmation of the promise as he was obviously hoping. “Daddy—“  
  
Logan chuckles. “Might as well start him up soon: Azazel’s already got Kurt working on his skills, and it’d be pretty embarrassing if that kid turned out better with a sword than the next king.”  
  
Nothing ever changes; he never wants to throttle Logan any less. And Erik, bless him, knows it: he tightens his hand, squeezing lightly.  
  
“Kurt is an _infant_ ,” he informs Logan crossly, allowing Erik his hold. It’s actually rather nice to have support. “I don’t believe Kurt is capable of learning combat skills this early.”  
  
Logan shrugs. “Never too early to learn. And Kurt is working on his teleportation.”  
  
Gods know he probably is. Raven wouldn’t care, so long as she doesn’t have to be bothered. It would be Azazel’s prerogative—and, weaponry aside, he’s an unexpectedly good parent: very involved, and, disconcerted by his bearer’s determination to spend as little time nurturing her child as possible, he’s worked to compensate.  
  
Raven. Yes. That’s… never an easy thought. It’s always a topic of great friction: Erik had hardly blinked when he’d passed judgment and declared the bond between Azazel and Raven valid. Raven had been married off, had received a mark, and had discovered precisely what it was like to have her guardian control her gift. As it turns out, Azazel was able to shut down her ability to shift for the nine months it took to carry Kurt.  
  
It hadn’t been voluntary. Most of the court knows she’d never wanted to carry Kurt to term.  
  
It’s sad, but… at least Raven doesn’t seem to _want_ to hate her child. A lack of understanding and acceptance as regards his life would be more accurate: the way she looks at him, as though she is still perpetually surprised by his existence—it’s not intentional. And there’s every reason to believe that she truly thought herself a guardian. For her, Kurt is a living reminder of her disconcertment with her own body. He’s something that should have been impossible. That does not excuse the way she’s turned from her son, but it does go a long way toward explaining why she’s hardly ever present in public, or why Kurt is raised largely by his father and by nannies.  
  
“Well,” Logan begins again, clapping Erik heartily on the back, at which several nearby guests openly gawk, “I ought to go find Marie. Think she’s off by the drink table. If that boy Remy is there again….”  
  
“We’ll speak later,” Erik agrees dismissively, attention already shifting—mainly, down onto Wanda, who, though she allows him to hold her hand, is starting blankly off into the crowd. She’s a picture in her little green dress, done up in silks and lace, with the color popping against the red of her hair, but her obvious disinterest in the proceedings is clear. Oddly, it serves to enhance her natural regal air: that serious little stare of hers gives the impression that she’s surveying the entire room and judging its occupants. Bored but serious, and always dignified.  
  
“We ought to have a word with Howard Stark,” Erik mutters, using the grip he has on Charles’ waist to steer him off and away toward the side of the room. “He has some excellent ideas for weaponry. We spoke earlier, and he offered to have us at his estate for a few days, let me have a look at his production. I’m never opposed to a chance to tinker with metal, but I wasn’t sure whether you’d want to leave the capital so soon with a newborn. Do you think she’ll take the journey well enough?”  
  
It _would_ be a good opportunity. If Essex should refuse to back down, a degree of conflict might be necessary: having Erik intimately familiarized with the best weapons would be a distinct advantage, as would simply _having_ those weapons—and between Stark and Erik, they would almost definitely create something worth having.  
  
“I’m not opposed. Lorna is bound to cry no matter what: it may as well be on a train as here in Genosha. Anyway, it would also be a chance to make a show of military strength without ever using the weapons at all. And Stark has a son Wanda and Pietro’s age: it would give them a playmate.”  
  
Erik taps his fingers over the patch of cloth covered by his hand, belaying his own impatience. In return, Charles presses his own hand up, snagging it on a bit of Erik’s coat. As is so often the case, Erik’s body is warm and inviting, solid when tested: Erik’s own clothes are warmed by body heat and are pleasant to rest a hand against, directly over Erik’s heart where the steady beat provides reassurance. “Good point. Wouldn’t hurt Westchester either, showing its military potential.”  
  
A fair assessment: Westchester may have pushed out Erik’s troops, but there are always factions of disgruntled mutants who need near-constant reminding that they live in a nation where equality is prized. As irritating as it is to need to constantly demonstrate military capability, the reality remains: if they so dislike humans or bearers, there are armed troops who are all too happy to escort them to the borders. The problem is that maintaining those troops comes at a price.  
  
“Papa!”  
  
If they force Pietro to stay in one place for much longer, it’ll be a wonder if he doesn’t spontaneously combust. Wanda too is at the end of her patience, and is showing it by scuffing a foot impatiently across the floor. They’ve been so good for the last few hours: it might be time to retire for the day.  
  
Leaning over into Erik’s side, he nudges his cheek into Erik’s jaw, roving his gaze over the room in the process. Someone is always watching, and the only way to combat the public’s perception is to be aware of what they’re seeing. “I think it might be time to make an exit.”  
  
“Long past due, I think,” Erik agrees, though there’s a pleased rumble in his voice—he’s always pleased at public displays of fondness—and he sinks into the affection, dropping a kiss to Charles’ forehead. He lingers, lips moving against Charles’ brow with a tender regard that’s become ingrained in most of his habits. “This might officially be a ceremony for Lorna, but as far as I can tell, it’s actually a pit of vipers.  
  
Too true. “Politics, I’m afraid.”  
  
“I prefer an _actual_ battlefield.”  
  
Yes, and no one would fail to notice that: Erik maneuvers as though he’s facing an army, the way he’s terrifying people out of his path with no more than cutting glance after cutting glance. He _is_ dressed in his military best, but it would be nice to think that just for one evening Erik could leave the battlefield behind him. Though, he’d have more luck at that if there weren’t people circulating about the room who genuinely do want to kill Erik.  
  
Poor bastards have no idea what they’re dealing with.  
  
 “I haven’t seen Essex recently,” Erik muses once they reach the edge of the room. Erik tucks him under his arm, creating a barrier against the crowd with his body. Tucked like this, warm and snug, with Erik’s arm lying solidly over his shoulders, he drifts further away from the irritation of earlier. Let Essex try what he will. He won’t succeed.  
  
“Are you asking me to find him?”  
  
Whatever Erik is asking is lost when Lorna spits out a tiny squall, effectively derailing the conversation. How a creature so tiny can emit such a bone-shaking noise—it’s one of nature’s less detestable mysteries.  
  
Sibling synchronicity—that’s another, less fortunate conundrum. Lorna is crying, so Pietro must fuss too. Whining is a detestable, ridiculous practice, and Pietro knows better, but a combination of tiredness and a habit of indulgence appear to have combined to convince him that it’s currently acceptable. This had better not be a practice in which he persists: this habit of complaining more on Genoshan soil, where Erik can hear him, will not be an attractive trait in a king.  
  
To Erik’s credit, he doesn’t buckle under the force of Pietro’s tantrums. More like he does his best to avoid them in the first place, which is understandable, considering the limited time he’s permitted with his children.  
  
Reaching down, Erik scoops Pietro up and perches him on his hip, smoothing out his son’s hair before reaching down and again grasping Wanda’s hand, keeping a tight hold on her. “I’d rather you not get anywhere near Essex’s mind.”  
  
“I suppose that’s one order I’m more than happy to heed.” At this particular moment, anyway. Erik need not know what came to pass earlier in the evening.  
  
The strange look that Erik fixes him with is a mixture of bemusement and melancholy, with a touch of bitterness thrown in. Pietro, unable to easily identify the mood, tosses his tiny arms around his father’s neck and burrows in against his shoulder. Most times, that would sufficiently distract Erik, and he’d take to cuddling his son.  
  
Not this time.  
  
Today, he tilts his head back, rolling the joint of his jaw and blinking steadily, staring over the rather short space between them. Erik has long since become a well-known quantity, but it’s been some time since he’s been this removed, and it’s hard to read his intentions like this without resorting to telepathy—and reading Erik’s mind seems an invitation for Erik to likewise pry. The preferable, though difficult, option is to try to normally puzzle out what he’s feeling. Not so easily done. Erik isn’t distant, exactly, but his face has lost its comfortable familiarity and replaced it with uncertainty.  
  
 _[Do you hate me, Charles?]_  
  
The words are pushed firmly across the link between them without hesitance, though tainted by a preemptive resignation that feels bone deep. Whatever this is that’s surfacing, Erik has had it rolling around inside of him for some time, albeit buried deeply.  
  
That’s far worse than a spur-of-the-moment impulse. Between knowing that and being hit by the trailing end of emotion connected to the thought, it’s little wonder that he flinches back from Erik. This level of unanticipated emotion is horribly disconcerting. Erik—is that really what Erik still thinks?  
  
 _[Well?]_  
  
“We aren’t perfect, Erik.” That’s a start. Not an explanation, but that’s better done by pressing in closer to Erik, scrunching his fingers into the fabric over Erik’s chest, above his heart, and resting his head down on Erik’s shoulder. There are people watching this, hardly taking care to conceal their rubbernecking from the center of the room, but they count for almost nothing at the moment.  
  
Perhaps Erik’s question shouldn’t be this weighty. But Erik hasn’t voiced that worry in years, and it may be that he’s never been quite so open to the answer. Once, Erik would have brushed aside any hate as a passing bout of temper that would die down in future years once nature took control. “Gods know _I_ am not perfect, and you aren’t either, but…” The space behind his eyes stings like little pinpricks against the skin, even as something resembling peace settles up under his ribs. “We’ve found a way to work.”  
  
In a room full of people, Erik still doesn’t hesitate to drop his head to the side, to press their heads together, cheek to hair. “You didn’t answer my question.”  
  
Always tenacious, his Erik. _[Sometimes I hate you.]_ Lying now would shatter the tentative balance they’ve reached. “But I love you rather fiercely.”  
  
From down against Erik’s leg, Wanda purses her lips and puffs out a sigh of impatience. Cradled against Erik’s chest, he’s in the position to stare downward at her. She isn’t looking up, but is still surveying the ballroom, one tiny hand clasped in Erik’s larger palm, while the other fiddles with her skirt. In some bizarre way, that’s comforting: he and Erik may toss about weighty issues above her head, but she remains untouched by their problems. How long will that last? But… they’re doing the best they can. She’ll turn out fine. She _will._  
  
Erik exhales heavily. “We _do_ work. And I love you. I—” He bites off the word, jaw bunching up and then loosening. “You cannot possibly imagine how much I love you.”  
  
No. But Erik never did try to leave his affection to the imagination. _That_ was never their problem.  
  
“I’ll always hate some of things you’ve done, Erik. But we—“ One look at Wanda, then at Pietro, and down at Lorna, cradled to his chest. “Together, we have the capability to be very good. To do great things.”  
  
Though Erik doesn’t physically pull away, his confusion tightens his muscles and chases out the languidness. “Haven’t we?” He tilts his head toward the children.  
  
A fair point, and in the midst of Erik’s scent and presence and care, Charles smiles, dropping his eyes closed and clutching Lorna a bit closer. “Children aside, none so great as what we _will_ do, I hope.”  
  
“Hmm?” Pietro squirms, kicking, but Erik tightens his hold and Pietro stops. There’s little need for much more: Erik has likely realized by now that in situations like these, the children tend not to stir. Call it an innate sense for when their parents need to speak, or, more likely, attribute it to an instinctual low-level telepathic influence.  
  
“Someday, our children will take over our kingdoms. Those things we couldn’t fix—I have faith that eventually things might be different.”  
  
“Charles—“ A hint of reproach.  
  
But this isn’t a conviction on which to be deterred: “I have faith in our children, Erik. I have faith in what we’ve created.”  
  
And maybe, just possibly, there’s still a little faith left over for Erik himself. Not for his policies or his convictions, but for the part of him that knows right from wrong, and that loves his children and wants the best for them. For the part of Erik that _is_ a husband—a loving, committed man who cares for his family—despite the wrongs he’s done that cannot be overlooked. They never _will_ be overlooked, but letting the consequences rule absolutely would be allowing Erik’s worst nature to ruin anything good.  
  
“I—“ But Erik stops and swallows down his words, shifting his weight to his opposite hip. “You, Charles, have an endless capacity for hope.”  
  
A good job that’s true, or he’d have given up on Erik long ago. “Do _you_ think we can make something good together?” he murmurs against Erik’s skin when the silence begins to stretch on too long.  
  
This close, the large breath that Erik takes in moves Charles’ body too, lifting and dropping him, and synchronizing their movements. “I do.”  
  
Maybe not like Erik thinks it’ll happen. But they will.  
  
They _will._  
  
As broken as they are, they can get better. The world can get better. Shaw is gone, Westchester remains, and Erik has finally begun to accept that mutual cooperation is the best he’ll get. Erik doesn’t need to _like_ that reality, as long as he respects it. And he does. He’s learned to respect it, and with that they _can_ make this work: perfect is not necessary for progress, and someday, that progress might yield a substantial change.  
  
All it takes is a little hope—hope in the fact that today is better than yesterday, and, likewise, tomorrow may be better than today.

There is _always_ that hope.

_**\--End--** _

 


End file.
